The Story Behind Memoirs of Love
It came slowly, over six years, through many small and powerful moments in my life.
It came through distance.
Through grief.
Through a word I had never heard before.
Through promises made to a dear friend.
And through the simple, beautiful act of sitting with family and listening.
During COVID, I could not return to Vietnam to celebrate my mother’s birthday with her. Like many people living far from home, I felt the pain of separation very deeply. Birthdays, family gatherings, and ordinary moments suddenly became impossible.
Wanting to make her birthday special, I decided to send her a meaningful gift. My mother is Buddhist, so I arranged for a friend to create a special necklace using stones chosen according to her birth date. I wanted it to be thoughtful, personal, and full of love.
But when she received the birthday gift and we spoke on the phone, she told me something that completely shocked me.
Because of the war, many people of her generation had different dates recorded on official documents. The birthday written on her papers was not the day she was actually born.
I was already in my forties, and I suddenly realised I did not even know my own mother’s real birthday. That moment stayed with me.
If I did not know something as simple and important as that, what else did I not know?
What stories had never been told?
What parts of my mother’s life had I never asked about?
For the first time, I understood that loving someone and truly knowing their story are not always the same thing.
Then, during the Melbourne lockdowns, life gave me another lesson. A much harder one.
My partner Jean-Michel’s cousin Bertrand passed away in Melbourne during COVID. Because of the restrictions, the family could not gather properly to mourn him. There was no normal goodbye. No shared meal. No final embrace. No moment where everyone could stand together and cry.
After he passed away, his wife Kate and their son moved from Melbourne back to Adelaide, where Kate could have more family support. Months later, his funeral was held in Adelaide. But we were still in Melbourne, still separated by restrictions, and we could only watch the funeral through a screen.
I still remember how strange and painful that felt. Someone you love is gone, but somehow it does not feel real, because you cannot be there. You cannot touch anyone. You cannot hold anyone. You cannot say goodbye in the way human beings need to say goodbye.
More than a year later, we were finally able to travel to Adelaide and stand at Bertrand’s graveside. By then, the grief had changed shape, but it had never disappeared.
Then another tragedy came. Not long after losing her husband, Kate lost her brother in a sudden accident. He had been playing basketball with his son, slipped, hit his head, went into a coma, and one week later, he passed away. In just two years, Kate lost both her husband and her brother.
I did not know her brother very well. I had only met him a few times. But I could feel the sadness around her. I could feel the shock, the unfairness, the pain of a family losing people they loved too soon.
That experience changed something in me.
It made me think about how fragile life is.
How quickly everything can change.
How often we think we have more time.
And how painful it is when we realise we did not ask enough, record enough, remember enough, or say goodbye properly.
Then another moment arrived. At an event in Melbourne, I listened to comedian Dianne Nguyen speak about taking her mother back to Hội An, the place where her mother’s story began. Dianne spoke about asking her mother questions, documenting her memories, and helping preserve the story of her life before Australia.
As I listened, something lit up inside me. I remember thinking: this is what I want to do. Not one day. Not eventually. Now.
And then she used a word that stayed with me.
As someone who migrated to Australia and is still learning English every day, that word stopped me. I went home and researched it. The more I learned, the more I loved it. A memoir was not just a record of what happened.
It was memory.
Identity.
Legacy.
Love.
Somewhere during that time, a phrase came to me: Memoirs of Love. At first, I did not know it would become the name of a business. I only knew it felt true.
Then came Emily.
In 2025, Emily’s health was declining. I was living in Melbourne, and she was in Saigon, but we stayed in contact. Every conversation carried a quiet feeling that time was precious. Eventually, I made her a promise. I told her I would come back to Vietnam to see her. And in November, I kept that promise.
For three days, we simply lived together.
We ate.
We talked.
We remembered.
We laughed.
We shared thoughts about life.
And during those days, I shared with her this idea I had been carrying for years: a project about family stories, memory, legacy and love. Emily understood immediately. She did not just understand the idea. She understood the heart behind it.
With her wisdom, her life experience and her sharp, generous mind, she helped me think through what this could become. We talked about how it might work. We discussed the process. We imagined the first project. We even laughed that Emily herself could be the first one, the one we could practise on, the one who would help me test the idea properly.
And in those conversations, the name Memoirs of Love became real. It was not just my name anymore. It was a name we chose together.
Before I left Vietnam, we made another plan. I would come back in February. We would spend time together in Long Hải, by the pool, with our friends from Saigon Players and the Osaka group. There would be food, laughter, stories, friendship and life.
When February came, I returned anyway. Because some promises deserve to be kept.
Together with our friends, I travelled to Long Hải.
We gathered.
We remembered.
We laughed.
We cried.
We celebrated her life.
And in those moments, I realised something very deep. The gathering Emily and I had imagined had still happened. Just not in the way any of us expected.
That journey became a film: Emily Would Have Loved This. Every time I think about that film, I am reminded that memory is not only about looking back. Sometimes memory is how we carry people forward.
In February 2026, I also returned to Vietnam for another mission. This time with my mother. My aunts. My brother. My sister. My niece and nephews.
Together we travelled through Mỏ Cày, Bến Tre and Cần Thơ. We looked at our family photo albums. We sat around tables. We listened. For hours.
My mother and my aunties shared stories from their childhood.
Stories about war.
Stories about poverty.
Stories about resilience.
Stories none of us had ever heard before.
Three generations sat together, listening. Not because there was a crisis. Not because someone was dying. But because we deliberately made time. Time to be together. Time to remember. Time to ask. Time to listen.
That journey became a film called Bên Bà – By Her Side. And while making that film, something became very clear to me.
The slowing down.
The conversations.
The laughter.
The discovery.
The feeling of sitting beside someone you love and realising there is still so much more to learn about them.
That is when everything connected. My mother’s hidden birthday. Dianne Nguyen’s story. The loss of Bertrand. The grief Kate carried. My promise to Emily. The journey home. The family stories around the table.
None of these moments were isolated. They were all pointing toward the same truth.
We think we know our families.
But every family is carrying stories that have never been told.
And the window to hear them is smaller than we imagine.
Memoirs of Love was born from that realisation. Not as a film company. Not as a business. But as an invitation.
An invitation to slow down.
To ask questions.
To gather.
To listen.
To laugh.
To remember.
And to create something meaningful together while we still can.
Because one day, the photographs will remain. The documents will remain. The possessions will remain. But what future generations will treasure most are the stories. The sound of a voice. The memory behind a photograph. The laughter around a table. The moments that reveal who we really are.