Recently, I visited Saigon’s newly inaugurated COVID-19 memorial park. Located at 1 Lý Thái Tổ, Vườn Lài Ward, the park opened in February as a part of the city’s efforts to expand its green spaces. The centerpiece of the park is its teardrop-shaped sculpture, a monument commemorating the solidarity and care that carried the city through the hardships of the pandemic.
As I sat by the surrounding stairs that form the outlines of a ripple, I reflected upon the pandemic for the first time in a while.
The last time I lived in Saigon was in 2021, during the height of the pandemic. After many months of relative success in containing the virus, Vietnam began seeing a surge in cases and deaths in April. Days before graduating from high school, we were told that our graduation ceremony was cancelled and moved to virtual. In the months between graduation and heading off to college, my life remained largely static, still as water.
In reflecting back to those long days, one image stands out above all others, perhaps because it encapsulates so well how I felt: the image of a pristine blue sky. It felt like the sky was as clear as it had ever been, due to the absence of Saigon’s traffic frenzy, if I had to guess. There was a quality of mesmerizing blankness to it all — one which made it easier to notice and appreciate the little things: the brilliance of the sun, specks of white clouds.
I think my life largely felt the same way. It felt remarkably uninteresting, but amidst the bareness of it all sprouted a deeper appreciation and passion for life and the ordinary. One could say my fascination with the clear skies stemmed from this too.
Needless to say, for many, the pandemic was neither simple nor peaceful. And for some, it never ended. Variant strains of COVID continue to circulate and affect vulnerable populations. Many still suffer from the effects of long COVID. Many of us lost loved ones. Such deaths and their ripples never truly leave us.
I tend to be skeptical of monuments, because they inherently function to homogenize what is never homogenous to begin with: the plurality and incongruence of uneven experiences contained within any historical event. The droplet is no exception, but I do appreciate that its surface mirrors its surroundings. What's reflected changes with who stands before it and when — an acknowledgment of the impossibility of any single, monolithic construction of public memory.
Piercing through the monument is a heart-shaped hole. It is a hole that, for me, represents indebtedness towards those who showed immense courage, strength, resilience, and more — family, friends, colleagues, and most of all, the countless essential workers who, with little to no other choice, put their lives at risk to keep society’s wheels turning.
The hole exists because we are all incomplete alone, incomplete without the care and labor of and for one another, a reciprocity so often unfulfilled. I hope the city’s new monument can serve as a reminder to all of us that such need for care and reciprocity too should never leave — and with it, a call to imagine what it would look like for the world to truly organize itself around such principles.
Standing before the droplet, I observe what it reflects. I’m there, tiny amidst it all. And above me, the bright blue sky, still looming large, still looming high.
