Healing is a community process.

 I have a lot more to tell you about our first night with Tree. But have to take a pause on that. Our entire group arrived and we started the tour. We stared our first day with a visit to the King’s palace. The King is rich and his palace is amazing.

The throne room is covered in gold and you are not allowed to take pictures of the inside. The is also a building called the Silver Pagoda that holds some of the riches of the King including gold Buddha statues, ruby encrusted jewelry, and just about every other form of treasure…but alas you are not allowed to take pictures.

Our next stop was S21 Toul Slang genocide museum. This is in my opinion the worst place on the planet. I don’t want to relive how it feels to move through such an evil filled place. My feelings are the same about this Highschool turn into torture prison used the Khmer Rouge to torture confessions out of innocent people. An estimated 40,000 people were imprisoned, and tortured at this prison.  

After they confessed to make the torture stop, they were taken to our next stop the Choeung Ek Killing Field Memorial. The exact number of people buried in the many mass graves is unknown. Many of the mass graves have not been excavated. There were so many people recovered and analysed that the Government ran out of money to continue the process. I have cried so many tears because of my last visit six years ago. Most in the darkest part of the night when I think about all the lives that were taken for no reason. All the people who were tortured because someone thought they might work for the CIA or the KGB. Men and Women, people of all ages and many different nationalities were murdered.  

This visit was going to be different. I was taking my kids and I was worried they would have a hard time with it. I was also without Madeleine my wife, that worried me, I knew I would end up crying and not having her to reassure me. But I was also going to have my three babylifter sibliings. Christal, Kouy and John. 

I have gotten to know these four of the the twenty probably the best, just because they have been active in our facebook group and I feel they have been open to learning more about our homeland. But I still didn't know how they were going to react.  

We walked around the site, reading the signs, talking to Tree and trying to divine some logic or reason why there were thousands of our people, and probably members of our families buried here.

Of course no logic or reason can explain the evil that some people will do to other people. One moment I stood with John near the babytree (the tree the Khmer Rouge would use to kill babies by swinging them into it, usually with their mothers watching...That is a different level of evil. Buddhism says that there are eighteen levels to heaven and eighteen levels to hell. If there is any thing like justice in this world, those monsters would exclusively exist for ever in the absolute worst level.  

"We should just burn the mother fucker down.” John said under his breath. I lowered my gaze in acknowledgment. By this time Kouy walked up. We stood in silence for a moment, all of us on the verge of tears. As I walked away I said but we can’t forget. Not that anyone who knows about it can, but the world has forgotten about these horrors, and as time passes the sharp sting fades too.

I wish we could forget. I wish we could live beyond the traumas we have experienced but cannot remember. I surely cannot wish hard enough for myself, so it’s not an option for others as well. I think for me the baby tree hits so hard is that had one or two other choices been made, that tree or an other one like it could have been our fate.

John and Kouy stayed a bit longer as I moved on the center Pagoda. Christal was stand near the base of the stairs when I walked up. At the base of the stair a man was selling incense and lotus flowers to place in front as an offering and tribute.

Christal bought one for each of us four. When John and Kouy joined us, we all walked around the pagoda as a group. It was not planned to happen that way. As we moved around we were faced with our ancestors, our families, and the people who lived through the height of

the four of us, met up at the back of the pagoda and stood there for softly consoling each other. There was something very powerful in that moment. I cannot explain how it felt…somber? Painful? Heavy? I cannot say. We needed each other at that moment.

Last time I came I had Madeleine and her presents was invaluable. But it wasn’t the same. I know that she will always be my shoulder to cry on and my reassuring hug when ever I need it. And she has been my rock for almost half my life.

This time it was having souls to cry with. There are only 20 people on this planet that know what it is be us and I was here with three of them. I cannot say for them but my soul ached, it is missing something and part of that was community of loss that we share.

I was a wreck I was on the edge of breaking down. Part of me said keep it together…be strong. Nothing I said could stop it. John was first to pull me into a hug, Christal and Kouy soon come over too and we all broke down.

it was a beautiful moment. It was one of the most real experiences of my life and it was healing.

That day a true bond was formed that will last our whole lives.

I will not say that I am ok. I know that I still have deep fractures that not even time can close. But I feel that moment the some of the fractures stopped spreading. I am do not think I can ever go to the place again unless it is with one of my siblings. I will always be there because we cannot do it alone.