Days don't go by without me thinking of my friend Phu Heo, who passed away this June at the age of 21. In the last couple of months of his life, we talked almost every single day for at least an hour, as we both went through some difficult times of our lives. We literally became brothers, so when Phu Heo passed away, I went into a major depression this year. How can I possibly lose my friend Phu Heo, who I just spent an entire day with two days before his passing? How could this only be possible?
Lately, I have been awfully stressed. The pressure at work, personal problems, grad school application, community work as well as freelance work is growing, and throughout these hard times, I keep on thinking of Phu Heo. I miss him. I seriously do. We are now just a month away from the Fourth International Vietnamese Youth Conference, and while I am very much looking forward to it, I know that it will be difficult as I become nostalgic thinking about the days of DH3, when I first really got to see what an amazing person Phu Heo is. The third conference is when his character for the first time really stood out to me, and that I mentally decided that I need to single him out and talk with him about his career and his family life, but most importantly about his insatiable passion and aspirations for Vietnam.
Life has been difficult for me without him, life has been difficult for a lot of people without him, but he continues to live inside me. As I am currently in the process of applying for graduate school (I finally took my GRE this past weekend again with good results), I often think about him, how he applied for med school, and passed away on the day he got accepted to UCLA Medical School.
Life is not fair, never has been. I miss you, my friend. May you rest in peace and look over us as we will remember you in Sydney.