Three Weeks With My Brother

For just a moment, it looked as if she were sleeping, and despite the fact that my mind knew what was happening, I nonetheless grasped at hope, praying for a miracle.

Later that evening her face began to swell. The fluids were necessary to keep her organs from being damaged in the event we would donate them, and little by little, she looked less like my mom.

Some of the relatives had arrived, and others were on the way. All had been in and out of the room but no one could stay very long. It was unbearable to be with my mom because it wasn't her--my mom had always been so full of life--but it seemed wrong to stand in the hallway. Each of us drifted back and forth, trying to figure out which alternative was less terrible.

More relatives arrived. The hallway began to crowd with friends as well. People looked to each other for support. I didn't want to believe what was happening; no one wanted to believe it. Cathy never left my side and held my hand throughout it all, but I felt myself constantly being pulled back to my mother.

When no one was in the room, I entered and closed the door behind me. All at once, my eyes welled with tears. I reached for her hand and felt the warmth I always had. I kissed the back of her hand. My voice was ragged, and though I'd already cried for most of the afternoon, I simply couldn't stop when I was with her. Despite the swelling, she looked beautiful, and I wanted--with all my heart and soul, and more than I've ever wanted anything--simply for her to open her eyes.

"Please, Mama," I whispered through my tears. "Please. If you're going to come out of this, you've got to do it soon, okay? You're running out of time. Please try, okay . . . just squeeze my hand. We all need you . . ."

I lowered my head to her chest, crying hard, feeling something inside me begin to die as well.

Micah arrived, and as soon as I saw him I burst into tears in his arms. Dana arrived an hour after Micah did, and had to be supported as she moved down the hallway toward us. She was wailing; hers were the tears of someone not only losing a mother, but her best friend as well. In time, my brother and I led her into the room. We'd warned her about the swelling, but my sister broke down again as soon as she saw how bad it had become. My mother looked unreal, a stranger to our eyes.

"It doesn't look like mom," she whispered.

Micah held her tight. "Look at her hands, Dana," he whispered. "Just look at her hands. Those haven't changed. You can still see mom right there."

"Oh, Mama . . ." she cried. "Oh, Mama, please come back."

But she couldn't respond to our pleas. My mom, who had sacrificed so much in her life, who had loved her children more than any mother could, whose organs would go on to save the lives of three people, died on September 4, 1989.

She was forty-seven years old.

CHAPTER 13

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

February 6

After two days in Angkor we flew back to Phnom Penh, this time for a tour of the Holocaust Museum and a trip to the Killing Fields.

The museum is located in downtown Phnom Penh, which had been seized by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, hoped to create a perfect communist state, and evacuated the entire city. A million people were forced into the countryside. With the exception of Khmer Rouge soldiers, whose average age was twelve, Phnom Penh became largely a ghost town.

With the departure of U.S. forces from Vietnam and no other country willing to intervene, Pol Pot began his bloody reign. His first act was to invite all the educated populace back into the city, upon which he promptly executed them. Torture became a way of life and death for thousands. In time, to save the cost of bullets, most of the executions were carried out by striking the victim on the back of the head with thick bamboo poles. Over the next few years, more than a million people were killed, either through enforced hardship, or executions in what are now known as the Killing Fields.

On the flight, Micah and I anticipated our arrival with a degree of ambivalence. Though we wanted to see both the museum and the Killing Fields, our excitement was tempered by our apprehension. This, unlike so many of the sites, wasn't part of ancient history; it was modern history, home to events that people want to forget despite knowing that they never should.

From the outside, the Holocaust Museum looked unremarkable. A two-story, balconied building set off the main road, it resembled the high school it had originally been. But belying its innocuous appearance was the sinister barbed wire that still encircled it; this was the place where Pol Pot tortured his victims.

Our guide, we learned, had attended school there, and it felt disconcerting, almost surreal, when he pointed to his former classroom, before moving us to the exhibits.

They were a series of horrors: a room where they used electricity to torture victims; other rooms featured equally horrific devices. The rooms hadn't been altered since Phnom Penh had been reclaimed, and on the floors and walls, bloodstains were still visible.

So much that we saw that day seemed beyond belief; the fact that most of the Khmer Rouge were children was almost too appalling to contemplate. We were told that the Khmer Rouge soldiers dispatched their victims without remorse and with businesslike efficiency; children killing mothers and fathers and other children by striking them on the back of the head. My oldest son was roughly the same age as the soldiers, which made me sick to my stomach.

On the walls were pictures of the victims. Some pictures showed prisoners being tortured; others showed the bodies unearthed in the Killing Fields. In either corner of the main room, there were two small temples that housed the skulls of those victims who'd been discovered in the camp after the guards had fled. On the wall was a painting of a young boy in a soldier's uniform, striking and killing a victim in the Killing Fields. The artist, we learned, had lost his family there.

No one on the tour could think of anything to say. Instead, we moved from sight to sight, shaking our heads and muttering under our breath. Awful. Evil. Sad. Sickening.

More than one member of the tour had to leave; the intensity was overwhelming.

"Did you lose anyone in your family?" I finally asked the guard.

When he answered, he spoke steadily, as if he'd been asked the question a thousand times and could answer by rote. At the same time, he couldn't hide a quality of what seemed almost stunned disbelief at his own words.

"Yes, I lost almost all of them. My wife, my father, my mother. My grandparents. All my aunts and uncles."

"Did you have any siblings?"

"Yes," he said, "a younger brother."

"Is he still alive?"

"I don't know," he said. "I haven't seen him since the war. He was a member of the Khmer Rouge."

We traveled to the outskirts of Phnom Penh and turned toward the Killing Fields. On either side of the dirt road were run-down houses; halfway up the street was a garment factory, and dozens of women were clustered outside, sitting in the dirt eating lunch as we passed.

Impossible to recognize unless you knew the location, the Killing Fields appeared as a ditch-strewn field, remarkably similar to the rest of the countryside we'd passed. It was far smaller than I imagined it would be--maybe a hundred yards to each side. In the center, the only recognizable feature was a memorial temple to honor the dead.

Over the next hour, we were led from one spot to the next; this was where a hundred victims were discovered; in another spot two hundred victims were found, over here, four hundred. In another spot, we learned that the skeletons unearthed had been buried without their heads, so it was impossible to know how many had been unearthed. In this particular field, we learned that thousands had died; precise figures are impossible to know with any certainty.

Micah and I simply wandered in silence, feeling sad and sickened. Eventually, we were led to the memorial temple and went inside.

The temple, white in color, was ten feet to a side, and roughly forty feet high, making it look like a rectangular block stood on end. We didn't know what to expect, but what we found left us paralyzed. Running up the back wa

ll to the top of the temple were glass-enclosed shelves, stacked with thousands and thousands of skulls.

On our way back to the bus, Micah summed up my own feelings in three simple words.

"This was hell."

In the strangest juxtaposition of the entire tour, one that left me feeling off balance for the rest of the day, we went from the Killing Fields straight to the Russian Market for a few hours of frivolous shopping.

Cambodia, like many Asian countries, has perfected the art of piracy, and the Russian Market was a building crowded with hundreds of vendors, selling everything from pirated DVDs to pirated clothing. DVDs cost three dollars, jeans supposedly from the Gap went for half that.

The market was crowded; it seemed that every tourist visiting the country had heard about the place and had decided to visit at the same time. Despite the fact that most of our tour group had ample financial means and could afford the real items back home, most everyone left the market with a bagful of bargains.

On our last night in Phnom Penh, there was no cocktail party, so we were encouraged to make reservations at one of the hotel restaurants, since our hotel boasted some of the best food in Cambodia. Micah and I, naturally, forgot to make them, and ended up eating at one of the casual dining spots in the hotel. It was nearly empty, and we finished our meal in half an hour.

Although initially disappointed, we ended up being pleased by our meal. As fate would have it, everything went wrong in the kitchens that night. Everyone who'd made a reservation wound up having to wait hours for their meal. Ovens broke, cooks hadn't shown up, meals came out wrong--Murphy's law was in full force. Appetizers took an hour and a half to reach the table; the main course followed two hours later. While in some circumstances that wouldn't have bothered people, we'd been on the road for thirteen days. People were tired and we had to rise early for our flight to Jaipur the following morning. On a night when everyone was looking forward to getting eight hours of sleep--as Micah and I did--most got less than five.

In our room, Micah and I were watching the Croc Hunter again. Along with CNN, The Crocodile Hunter was the only English-language show we'd been able to find. Every time we'd turned on the television--no matter what country we were in--Croc Hunter was always on. By Cambodia, it had become something of a long-running joke--by our reckoning, it was the most widely watched show in the world.

"Oh, isn't this snake a beauuuuuty," Steve Irwin, the ever enthusiastic Australian host, was saying. "Look at the colors. Oh, she's magnificent, isn't she? This little beauty is dangerous--one bite can kill a dozen men!"

"The guy is nuts," Micah commented.

"He's always nuts," I said. "My kids love to watch him."

Micah was quiet for so long, I thought he'd begun to doze. When I glanced over at him, however, I saw he was staring at the ceiling.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked.

It was a long moment before he answered. "What we saw today. Earlier this morning. The museum, the Killing Fields."

"It was awful, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." He nodded. When he spoke again, his voice was subdued. "It just made me feel sad. Sad for the people here, sad about the world. Sad about everything. And empty, too. It was all so pointless. Things like this shouldn't happen." He hesitated. "It reminded me of how I felt after mom died."

I glanced over at him, not altogether surprised at his comment. Whenever either of us were sad, our conversation always returned to the topic of our family.

"Do you realize that almost everyone on this trip is older than she was when she died?" he asked. "I can't believe it's been over thirteen years. It doesn't seem like it."

"No it doesn't," I agreed.

"Do you realize that in less than ten years, we'll be as old as mom was when she died? Peyton would only be eleven years old then."

I said nothing. Micah drew a long breath before going on.

"And it's strange. I mean, when I think about mom, it's like she hasn't aged. In my mind, I mean. When I think about her, I always picture the way she looked the last time I saw her. I can't even imagine what she'd look like now . . ." He trailed off. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. "You know what I regret?"

I looked at him, waiting.

"That I didn't get a chance to say good-bye. You and Cathy got to do that. When I left for Cancun, I was running late, and I didn't even think to call her. And the next time I saw her, she didn't look like mom anymore, and we were talking about donating her organs. It was just . . . unreal. And it breaks my heart to think that after sacrificing so much for us, she never got a chance to see or hold her grandkids, she never found out that you became an author, she never got to meet Christine or the kids. Mom would have been great as a grandma . . ."

He trailed off, his gaze unfocused.

"I miss her, too," I said quietly.

The months after my mom's funeral were halting steps in search of some sort of normalcy. No one in the family seemed to know how to react or what to do. Micah, Dana, and I tried to support one another as well as our dad. It seemed that every time one of us began crying, the others would fall in line. Thus we each came to the independent conclusion that no one should cry anymore. And we didn't, unless we were alone.

Our mom was gone, yet strangely, there were times when it seemed as if she wasn't. Everything in the house bore my mother's imprint; the location of the spices in the cupboard, the placement of the photographs on the shelves, the color of the walls, her nightgown draped over the chair in her bedroom. Everywhere we looked, we were reminded of her, and there were moments when I'd be standing in the kitchen when I'd suddenly begin to feel as if my mom was standing behind me. At times like those, I would pray that I wasn't imagining it. I looked for signs--movement from the corner of my eyes, perhaps, or limbs of trees swaying in the breeze. I ached for something to let me know her spirit was still with us. But there was nothing.

Yet, if the house was a constant reminder of my mom, it also began to serve notice as to how empty it had come to feel. There was no energy in the house, no vivaciousness, and the sound of laughter no longer echoed off the walls. We sometimes wondered whether we should rearrange the furniture or remove the more obvious signs of my mother's presence. Her purse, for instance. For years, she'd placed it in a basket near the front door; months after her death, no one had summoned the will to put it in the closet or even open it, to see what was left behind. We knew what we'd find; pictures of the family, letters from her mother, her lipstick and personal trinkets. Those things were so personal, so . . . mom . . . that we couldn't touch them for fear of somehow betraying her memory. We didn't want to forget her, and in a way those were the only things we had left. The purse, it seemed, had become our silent entreaty for her return.

That year, we didn't celebrate Christmas at the house; it was the first time in our lives we spent the holiday with other relatives. And though the company was comforting, none of us could shake the empty feeling in our hearts. Mom was gone, and Christmas at home would never be the same again.

Cat and I settled into our first year of marriage, while at the same time doing our best to take care of dad. We set aside every Thursday, and used that time to take my dad out to the movies or to dinner.

Micah and Dana decided to rent an apartment together. It was only a couple of miles from the house, and like Cat and me, they thought it would be a good way to keep an eye on him. If the death had been hard on us kids, it had been far harder on my dad. While I can't claim to understand their relationship, my mom and dad had spent twenty-seven years together, and his world was suddenly and completely altered now that she was gone.

He seemed to live by instinct alone. After the funeral, he'd begun wearing black, and only black. At first, we thought it was a phase, but as the months passed, we began to realize how lost he was without her. He'd depended on my mom as we had. Because they'd been married at such a young age, my dad had no experience in being alone, or even what it was like to be an adult without her by his

side. My dad lost his best friend, his lover, his confidante, and his wife. But if that wasn't hard enough, he'd also lost the only life he'd known how to live. He had to learn to cook and how to clean the house, and had to do those things on his own. He lost a good portion of the family income, and had to learn how to budget. And he had to learn how to relate to his kids, who for the most part had been raised by his wife. We loved our dad and he loved us, but the truth was that he seemed to know as little about us as we did about him. In our own way, we each did our best to fill the void left in his life, and one by one we slowly became replacements for all that my mother had been to him.

Micah became his confidant, the only one that dad would really talk to. My dad had always admired Micah in the same way that I had, and that feeling only grew stronger after my mother died. Micah, I think, embodied many of the things my dad always wanted to be: handsome and charismatic, confident and popular. In a strange way, I think he began to seek my brother's approval. He took few actions without soliciting Micah's opinion, and listened to Micah's latest adventures with a proud twinkle in his eye. Cat became his buddy; he'd been fond of my wife since they'd first met, and whenever we'd stop by, they'd spend time together. They drank dessert wines and cooked together, they joked and laughed, and in sad times my dad turned to Cat when he needed a shoulder to cry on. And Cat responded by always saying or doing exactly what was needed. My dad also threw himself into taking care of my sister. He'd help with her bills, bought her a car, took care of her health insurance; eventually the two of them began taking care of the horses together. My dad, it seemed, was not only doing the things he thought my mom would do as a parent, but in taking care of Dana, found the strength to go on. I, too, began to play a role my mother had once had, but it was one that I would wish upon no one. With my intense schedule in high school, moving away for college, and starting a life with Cathy, I'd become the least dependent on my parents, and had been so since the age of sixteen. Maybe my dad realized this, too, for as the weeks and months wore on, I became the outlet for my dad's anger and pain.