Kigali Memorial Centre, part 2

[Caution: tough reading ahead]

This post is dedicated to Mark.

I was pretty much okay, shedding a few tears here and there, until the children’s room. In a small corner in the second golden room, I couldn’t help but cry, really cry. I thought about my own children, about all of those children and babies who were murdered, and the more I tried to fight the tears back, the more intense they became, so I quietly, alone, cried until I was done for while.

I tried to focus on each child, each set of eyes, all the way through.

As I was leaving the building, a few steps after the end of the children’s exhibit, I heard wailing coming from the first floor. I didn’t know Rwandan schoolchildren were on a tour there, but I fled as quickly and quietly as I could outside the building, down the stairs to the terraces of mass graves. As I was descending, I really questioned whether I can do this research, this work with survivors. There is so much pain.

It felt like I was opening, being pulled in half, and that I would break apart. I remember this feeling.

As I concentrated on that pain, the abominable loss, the fear that I might be unable to do the work, the shame of inadequacy, and I let myself cry hard, I started to notice that even though I felt like I would separate into parts, something was holding. It took awhile. The parts seemed to want to come apart, but they held at the base.

Slowly, slowly, it seemed to me to be like a flower, the base of which held not only two halves, but many petals—an electrifying red. And when those petals opened, oh god.

After more time and more tears, I slowly noticed that this flower didn’t have just a base; it was attached to a strong stem; then a branch came into focus, and eventually, to my amazement, a tree with an enormous, broad, reassuring trunk. When I could gaze into the distance, I could see that I was in the middle of many other trees, some also blossoming with enormous, bright flowers.

I kept this visualization throughout the next few hours as I walked the grounds and thought about how to prepare myself to help survivors write their stories next summer. Today, in those gardens, I couldn’t help but notice how life insists on just being.

After awhile, I heard more schoolchildren wailing, and instead of avoiding them, I walked into the lobby and waited for them to come out, supported by friends or staff. One was sobbing, calling for her mother and father; one boy was sniffling but I could see he needed to cry. There was nothing I could do, except be calm, dig way down with my toes into the roots of the tree.

I think about the possibility—inevitability—of deep emotion at my writing retreats next summer. Even for those who are not in active trauma, for those who have developed coping skills, sometimes all you can feel is the opening, the breaking apart. It’s all too easy to forget the tree, the roots, the forest of other trees. When this connection is lost, it seems to help to have someone near who is calm, who is capable of blossoming, but is living at the roots.

My writing students taught me this very quickly. My friends have also helped me learn about this, this emotionally intimate connection.

But I don’t think that I would be able to do this work—and I will be able to do it—had it not been for the trauma I survived throughout the second five years of my life and the healing work during another five years in my thirties. Traumatologists often write that survivors can ultimately become grateful for their particular terror, the terror that changes everything. And I’ve known for a long time that I wouldn’t be who I am without my particular terrifying experiences, but grateful? No way.

Until now. Now I get it: I can do a good job here, can be effective, not only because I know how it feels to open and feel like I might break apart, but also because I’ve learned how to move from blossom to trunk to root to forest and back. And I know how writing can help create a map for that journey.