accept loss forever

He saw his first , or maybe second, it only takes a second, Cambodian woman with a prosthetic leg. The majority minus arms and legs or fingers and hands are men and kids. Kids love to play with buried things. Dirt play.

Today it was her turn. 

It was her gait. How she dragged the drab olive green right leg behind her.

It reminded her of a lost conversation where one whispers more than they know. More than they can reveal. Truth be said.

She was maybe 40. Give or take a moment.

It was a moment years ago when she stepped on the invisible mine. What you don't see is fascinating. Her story evolved into family taking care of her after they heard the explosion. After it rained dirt, rice, weeds, tears, light, broken clouds, false dreams, expectations, celebrations and musical thunder notes.

A doctor. Blood. Pain. Loss. Tears and memory comforted her. She absolved her faint quick belief in Buddha beyond all the mysteries.

After she went to Siem Reap she got her new artificial leg at Cambodian Handicap.

If her husband and family rejected her then she ended up in the city, like today, sitting on a sidewalk offering handmade bags and bracelets or selling her sorrow and loss and smile and understanding among friends and polite distant tourists afraid to look her in the eye. Later, she dragged it through night comforted by the fact it was a long way from her heart.

If your legs get heavy walk with your heart.

 

The sky is Falling

On an edge of planet Earth spinning in a galaxy,

Countries adjusted advertising concepts of insecurity.

They sold Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, Adventure and Surprise.

Consumers washed it down with a super-sized sugared sixteen-ounce big gulps.

Populations accepted multiple real and imaginary nightmares of unknown caloric proportions.

The sky is falling. Love is in the air. Run for cover.

Really? 

 The Children's Hospital in Siem Reap has 22 beds in one room. They are full. They are filled with infants and children wearing air hoses in their nose. They suffer from pneumonia and tuberculosis. This is common in Cambodia. A parent holds a tiny hand.

 I.C.U. has five beds. They are full.

400 mothers cradling kids wait to see a nurse. The nurse can dispense five medicines. Cheap generic pain killers.

Life is a pain killer.

Two drugs are generic placeboes. The mothers are happy to get SOMETHING, anything. They have no knowledge about medicine.

One effective pill prescribed by a doctor costs $1.00. Parents need to buy 15. 

$15.00 is a fortune. Out of the question. Parents accept cheap ineffective drugs.

Parents need a miracle.

How much does a miracle cost?

42

In another incarnation I developed polio before Inactivated Polio Vaccines (IPV) and Mr. Jonas Salk arrived in 1955. 

An epidemic of polio in 1916 killed 6,000 people.

It paralyzed 27,000. In the early 1950’s there were 58,000 cases of polio each year. Salk’s determination in 1954 to conduct field trials resulted in 1.3 million children receiving the polio vaccine. He never patented the vaccine. The number of cases had dropped to 10 by 1979.

In 1955 I was flat on my back in an iron lung. I stared into a small horizontal mirror. I prepared to have my second son. 

He survived. Doctors proclaimed him a miracle baby. They thought I might die.

I was appointed to have him.

I controlled the process. He was small and sick. He recovered. He is strong and loving in his unique calibrated dysfunctional way.

I birthed a daughter three years later.

After the iron lung I spent 12 years in a wheelchair.

I died when I was 42.

julia writes from sweden

(This is an excerpt of a letter Juia wrote to Rita after returning home. It is reprinted with her permission.)

I am writing down the bones. 

I have learned that in Cambodian traffic one relies purely on the force. Which is easier to locate once all the buzzing stops and you start focusing on the right now. If you try to think about anything in the past or in the future you will get hit by at least one month. 

I know, I tried it. Twice. Navigating through the craziest jams becomes easy if you pay complete, relaxed attention. Life is same, same, but different as the tourist t-shirt reads. Mine reads I heart Cambodia. 

I have learned that a land mine costs $3 to put in the ground. A prosthetic limb on average $3000. I have learned that a government-employed teacher in Cambodia earns about $40 a month, a privately employed teacher can earn twice that. 

I have learned that with a little help a family can make some extra money raising butterflies. I have learned that papaya and lime is an awesome combination, that amok is delicious and sweet and sour fish soup is even better, that coconut water is best had out of a newly cracked open coconut after my new friend Mo climbs up the tree to get it for me, that Angelina has good taste in drinks and that Chin's mom can cook a fantastic feast on a nail. 

I have learned that I can be useful and that I am needed. My life is no longer an empty search for anything to hold on to. My purpose has found me. 

I am grateful I decided to go to Cambodia. 

I am grateful I went despite second thoughts. I am grateful to all the beautiful, inspiring, wonderful people I got to meet there. I am grateful that I could be of service. I am grateful for the lessons I learned. I am grateful that this happened at a time in my life when I am open to change. I am grateful that I am out of the dark. My life is the light and I am living it intentionally. All the rest is just details. I'll fill you all in when inspiration finds me. Take care, Rita.

memory 3

then what happened in the plotless point, asked elf.

a young smiling cambodian man without hands smoked a cigarette.

he held it between stubs.

his rolling cart held genocide books and angkor aspara dancers.

he left a fractured conversation with a friend in expansive green shade near a brown river. 

hi mister, want to buy a book? a dancer? cheap. good morning price. brings luck.

no thank you. reading history is destined for marvelous suffering memory.

dancers live forever, he said, dancing to the sea. waves turned a page.