Orphaned children of the Nguyen family of Quakerto

by 8DonCo Sat Nov 24, 2018 5:09 pm

Please say a prayer this Thanksgiving for the four children of Peter and Vivian Nguyen, the Quakertown couple who died within 12 weeks of each other this year.

The siblings huddled near their grandmother in stunned silence outside the intensive care unit at St. Luke’s University Hospital in Bethlehem, where their mother lie dying.

Joseph Nguyen, the oldest at age 22, tended closely to his much younger brothers and sister and all of them rushed prayers to the heavens as their world crumbled about them. All of them barely awake in the wee hours of Nov. 5, desperately hoping to be awakened from the worst kind of nightmare.

Inside the ICU, Vivian Nguyen, 46, had suffered a massive heart attack several hours earlier. The night before at home around 11, she called for Joseph, who found her coughing up blood and nearly unable to breathe. He rushed her to St. Luke’s Hospital in Quakertown. But her condition was so dire she was quickly transferred to the Bethlehem facility. The woman was unresponsive and connected to an array of monitors and life-sustaining machines. Death was calling and refused to be silenced. Her children prayed for a miracle to come walking through the door.

What they saw instead was a doctor.

“He said there was nothing more they could do for her, that she was dying,” recalled Joseph Nguyen.

Nguyen and the doctor reentered the ICU at 4 a.m. How his weary legs got him there he cannot say.

“I was standing there watching them pull the plug on my mother, and inside my head I’m screaming, ‘This can’t be happening! Please come back, mom! Please! Please come back!’” Nguyen said.

Nguyen returned to the waiting room to deliver the worst news to his siblings. Their cries, he said, were unlike any he had ever heard. Young faces emotionally drowning in puddles of tears. He reached out his arms and pulled them toward him.

“I just kept telling them it was going to be OK, that I will be there for them,” he said. “I kept telling myself I must be strong for them. They needed me to be strong.”

Their mom’s death felt like a nightmare.
Same as three months earlier.
When their father died.
•••
As you bow your head with your family at your Thanksgiving dinner table, find a moment to say a prayer for the Nguyen children of Quakertown. Say a prayer for Jonathan, Jessica and Jesse. And maybe an extra one for Joseph, who becomes their guardian under the most devastating of circumstances. He assumes the role of parent, a figure of guidance and authority, their breadwinner. The balance of a home mortgage hangs above their heads.

A GoFundMe page has been established and realized more than $22,300 to help the children weather this incredibly unfair storm.

Joseph’s shoulders must broaden now. On course to graduate from Temple University with a degree in business management next spring, he has suspended his studies. Academics have been placed on hold until after the holidays, until the emotional seas calm. For now, his most important letter grade is an F: for family.

“When my father died, my mom asked me to help care for the kids,” Joseph Nguyen said.

“Now with her gone, I know mom and dad would want me to take care of my brothers and sister. They really need me now. I accept the challenge and am willing to do whatever it takes to care for them. I know it will be hard, but we must stay together as a family. Mom and Dad always told us nothing is more important than family. ”

•••

He was born Phero Nghi Xian Nguyen in Vietnam, but everyone called him Pete. He worked as a custodian for GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. He passed his love of music on to his children, who would accompany his guitar playing with piano and clarinet as Vivian sang.
Vivian, who worked in a nail and beauty salon, also was born in Vietnam. She came to America as a teenager in the early 1990s, and was a foster child of Madelyn and Dennis Kubach, of Bensalem. She attended Armstrong Middle School, and learned to speak English by reading the dictionary after dinner each night.
After one year with the Kubach family, she went to live with her Vietnamese relatives in Hunting Park, in North Philadelphia, where, at Holy Innocents Roman Catholic Church, she met Pete. The attraction was immediate. They married there in 1994. They had four children. Four children now living a nightmare.
“We are pretty stunned right now,” Madelyn Kubach said. “Their father died suddenly, and they were kind of getting adjusted to that; I don’t want to say things were getting back to normal. Now their mother dies three months later. We’re all doing what we can to help them.”
“Joseph doesn’t have time to mourn. He’s went from being 22 to being 45 in a few months. They have some of Peter’s relatives from Florida up to help them. But you wonder why this happens. You wonder how the kids get through something terrible like this.”
•••

On Aug. 8, Vivian, Pete, and their three younger children arrived in Vietnam; Joseph remained home because of work. It was a special trip, to show the children their parents’ native country.
The first night in their hotel, Vivian and Pete went to sleep. Pete, who took medication to control hypertension, died overnight from a stroke. He was 57.
“My little brother called from Vietnam to say Dad didn’t wake up,” Joseph Nguyen said. “He’s said the paramedics were pumping his chest, but he wasn’t waking up. I dropped to my knees in shock. I felt helpless. He was gone.”
•••
Thanksgiving has been a blessed day at the Nguyen home. The family bows their heads before a traditional dinner of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn and cranberry sauce, followed by some football watching on TV, and some Black Friday shopping.
“We were Americanized,” Joseph Nguyen said. “Thanksgiving was a day to give thanks.”
Four siblings dealing with the heartbreaking deaths of their mother and father in a 12-week span will sit around a Thanksgiving dinner table with extended family. They will clasp hand and shed tears. And then, somehow, they will find the strength to give thanks.

“It will be hard to be thankful that day,” Joseph Nguyen said. “But I must not think of myself. I must think of my little brothers and sister. I’m sure God has a plan, and we must follow it. I have to look on the bright side — at least the kids and I are together.
“And so are our parents.”

by ga10 Sat Nov 24, 2018 6:29 pm

Nếu dân local ai biết về gia đình này rồi donate directly thì khỏi phải chia với GofundMe!

by 8DonCo Sat Nov 24, 2018 8:39 pm

tuổi nầy mà ăn uống không kiêng cữ và đi bác sĩ dễ bị vì đôi khi không có symptom và ai cũng nghĩ mình còn trẻ

by May4phuong Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:57 pm

Quakertown cách khu tui ở chừng 10-15 miles mà sao tui hong nghe tin gì cả ?

by ga10 Sat Nov 24, 2018 10:55 pm

May4phuong wrote:Quakertown cách khu tui ở chừng 10-15 miles mà sao tui hong nghe tin gì cả ?

Mây ask around mấy người trong nhà thờ hay Chùa coi có biết gì về gia đình này 0.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=joseph%20nguyen%20quakertown

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Orphaned children of the Nguyen family of Quakerto

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