Fatherless Motherful: Implications from a Life Story into Post-Khmer Rouge Recovery

This ordinary article of mine has no other addenda but delivering a piece of my mother’s life story after my father’s assignation of conspiracy in 1992. This is not an academic text but a life story alongside with my own perspective toward current development. Therefore the way I write somehow reflects my emotion of all tastes as well as metaphoric uses. There is no institutional reflection involved but my own.

Based on my limited knowledge I have so far—I welcome constructive comments on this article, I only want to give some implications from my life story to current development in my piteous Cambodia—my country my pity. Despite absence of perfection this article may provide insights for how my little poor country should grow from a corner which I try to conceptualize. There are two big pictures I like to draw. One picture depicts the end of Khmer Rouge which on contrary is the beginning of my mother’s war for survival behind loss of her helping husband. The other picture illustrates my points of view on relationships between women, family and potentials for growth in a war-torn nation. Be patient and carry on reading.

Fatherless Night: To Whom Bullets Belonged? Khmer Rouge?

It has been over 24 years after 15 December 1992—the day I was born and welcomed by nothing but tears of grief and curiosity of silence. That was weird, wasn’t it? It will not be so anymore after this section describes a life-changing night to my mom and my whole family, and it was a night which always ever ties me up with a memory of curiosity of who killed him despite Khmer Rouge alleged.

A night began in the same year, same month but just 4 days ahead my birth day when my skin first touched sunlight and my cry was first heard by creatures on earth. But it was not me alone to cry; many people were crying around me, yet it was different kinds of cry maybe. If I had been able to speak, I would have asked my mother and brothers, “Why are you crying?—you should come to breadth-feed me, you should come to lull me to sleep. Mom, are you crying because I am son not a daughter as desired by dad? Where is dad? Doesn’t he know his youngest son has been born? Is he unhappy because I am a son? I do hate him. He should not disappear” With grief I mention, so far he has been disappeared from us for 24 years 2 months and 3 days with no return. My questions have been all answered, but just only one left with curiosity—who made my father disappeared? No matter how many answers to this have been tried to satisfy me, I still feel curious because it has not been logic enough to convince me of who really pulled the trigger letting bullets go through his body so that he could not come to see me at the delivery room. Those bullets are cruel to me, my mom and my family as they give me a new identity of fatherlessness and my mom a husbandless wife.

I received a new identity constructed by people around. I was not only called fatherless but stupefied by kids and even my grade 3 teacher saying that my birth ended my dad’s life, which was not fun at all. The alleged omen that my birth finished my dad’s life was getting on my nerve though I did not show any expression of frustration. But it really hurt. Who killed him? Me? It can be understood that social constructions around a child is so influential that the child can be shaped into a figure upon such the constructions. Please make good social constructions if you want your kids to be good.

Did Khmer Rouge really kill him? When I grew up I always heard people saying that my father was killed by remained Khmer Rouge cadres who often came to rob people at night. Not only did those neighboring people say so but also his colleagues gave the same remarks on the commemoration ceremony during his funeral. Because my father had held sort of high ranking position in the government during 1992, in his funeral footage, I see a lot of Kampong Thom governmental officials and UN representatives coming to say good bye to him. They showed respect for his contribution to reconciliation process to post-conflict Cambodia. Of course, Cambodia happily enjoyed the end of Khmer Rouge regime and welcomed recovery of growth and peace, but it was just the beginning of war to my family—my mother who had to face upcoming enemy of impoverishment. She got appointed as back and front soldiers in the absence of supervision from her gone husband. It was the war that my mother had to fight alone alongside with 6 little soldiers in need, and the youngest soldier could not even speak yet. It is barely possible to win over the war when your bread-winner general was gone.

To wrap up this section, I just want to draw the same question: to whom the bullets belonged? Did the bullets belong to the Khmer Rouge bandits as the accusation constructed by society around me? Let me dare to give some pieces of suspicion. Back to that assassination night, there was not a single properties lost. Nothing got lost or taken away but his breathe. Was it what the Khmer Rouge bandits wanted? Another conspiracy is that 1992 did not yet reach security. Then everyone realized that it was not safe at night. No one was brave enough to get out at night—letting alone opening the door for a stranger calling their name outside. But my father did open the door after having heard his name called from the outside. I do not think my father was brave enough to do that unless he realized the voice by the door was someone he knew. Was it the Khmer Rouge? How can I define Khmer Rouge? Or did he know a lot of Khmer Rouge? Why did they kill him without taking away properties?

But Motherful: A Woman Who Makes Dysfunctional Functional

My heart whispers at my ear that I am fatherless but motherful. I would think of my mom as the restless Moon with endless light of love, rising in all moments regardless days or nights. Actually lighting up the world in the day should be responsibility of the male Sun while the female Moon should take less by lighting up the world at night for only 15 times per month. There is only one day she has to produce full light. She must be restless lighting the world days and nights due to the loss of her Sun and carrying all burdens of both household chores and breadwinner roles. Her war begins on and on until her little soldiers grew up as her reinforcement.

First I felt angry and then the anger makes me move. Since my father left us, she has been taking “full” responsibilities walking with heavy burdens alone. She produced no complaint but silence of patience though she sometimes fell into fatigue. Her face reveals all physical and emotional fatigue sometimes because of her troublesome sons. I still remember she cried and locked herself into her bedroom because of one of my brother. The brother did not listen to her and went out at night making troubles fighting with local gangs. One day she even found out a rumor that my brother was associated with drug use and moral misconduct. She felt speechless and did not eat meals for a few days. It hurt me and made me angry at my brother then. I wanted to ask him, “Don’t you want mom to rest? Do you enjoy seeing her cry of you? She has been hard for almost half of her life. Why don’t you try making her smile instead? I do hate you brother.” Not to go further, I can say that my motivation for growth started from anger. It is not the matter of getting angry or not—we are sentimental human beings. But it is the matter of how we control the anger and turn it to motivation—the motivation of not making her cry anymore. Finally all of my brothers realized her fatigue and became all good-mannered.

Therefore I wrote on the subtitle above “motherful” in spite of grammatical inaccuracy. We are fatherless but we have a full mother—motherful, who have been trying her best bringing us a good family—not a dysfunctional family I used to see. She rarely used sweet words but sometimes swore at us. But her actions speak louder and sweeter than words. In fact I heard by accidence from her chatting with her friends that she used to consider remarriage and sometimes she almost committed suicide just after her husband died. But she did worry it was not going to be helpful at all. She should have been afraid of dysfunctional family made by a new spouse. My childhood memory is inerasable. My brain cells arrested a moment when she told her friend, “I want to go [to die], but when I look at him [me] I could not dare to do so. Who looked after him?” So when I grew older, by this memory I can realize how much fatigue she has in heart.

My mom makes raw cooked. An analogy that best suits my mom, if allowed to me give, is a skillful cook. Actually it is not just an analogy; her food is really too good to be true for us. I dare to say that my family was broken since dad’s death; it lost the middle pillar of whole family structure, so my mom had to fix it up. Finally she is strong enough to maintain and reorder that family—strong enough to make her raw little sons to cook citizens who are functional in society in need of growth. She sent my first brother to be a technician fixing motorbikes, and years later she got advices from her brother-in-law to send my 3rd and 4th brothers to study veterinary medical education while my 2nd brother became a secondary school teacher. A few years before the end of my high school, my 5th brother got a scholarship to study to be a nurse in Kampong Cham province. For me, she ignites the light of commitment inside my heart which always motivates me to study at university in Phnom Penh and now up graduate degree in Thailand. In outsiders’ perspective it is not much. But we think that it is cooked enough for us beyond what we could expect from a single-parent family. She never complained in front of us but she chose to release her fatigue by chatting with her neighboring friends. I often heard her say, “I do not want anything from them. I never expect anything from them after they get married. All I want is to see them getting educated, getting jobs and getting married.” When I asked her something about my education, for example when I first decided on which major to study, she responded simply but lovefully, “You are more educated than I am. Please go for your decision, son.” Maybe in heart she wanted to say, “I am sorry, son because I cannot give you any advice but chance. I just barely read and write. How can I advise on your study?” But you know what mom. The chance you give to me, to us, is great enough—so great, too great that we could not imagine.

I rarely hear her talking about her bitter past in the Khmer Rouge regime unless she was asked about that. I rarely hear her taking about her memories of losing her husband. But don’t think she has forgotten. But because she is too busy in fighting in the war on poverty and war on cooking her raw food. Don’t think a woman like my mom is weak. But she has FULL energy not to be trapped by the past but enjoy the present and prepare for the future. Thanks mom!

In fact it is not her alone. My mom received advices from other people and good relatives. What I would like to argue here is that women especially in post conflict society have to be given chance and values for her constitution in making raw to cooked—from raw nature of human beings who are not functional to cooked functions in a society.

Unfulfilled Potentials: My perspectives on post-Khmer Rouge Recovery

What we should be afraid of is ‘unfulfilled potentials’. Let me be more specific by talking about two kinds of potential in my context: women and children. In a patriarchy-dominant society, it is common to see women marginalized and unseen so they miss chances to fulfill their potential. I may focus on [social] indifference over women’ roles in functionalizing family and making useful and constructive citizens. How much do men understand that their wives can make a big change? If not much I think it is due to the fact that women’s contribution is somehow overseen because her everyday practices with kids look too normal and tiny to be realized. But these small things make a big change and long-term growth. Not to be indifferent, men especially male policy makers are suggested [by me] to try to recognize women in social development. Yet trying is not good enough, neither is recognizing. We have to include and empower them to be part of manufacturing assembly line which filters bad and raw citizens into cooked functional citizens. Confucius says, “Educated mother produces educated children”. But mother did not go to school, but she is visionary.

Why do we need to fulfill women’s potentials? I do not think all dysfunctional families in post-conflict Cambodia are successful in recovery. Imagine life can be lost in every minute. My father was lost in a blink of an eye in a single night. Your father may also get lost in a traffic accident. His father should have lost in the war. Her father also possibly stops breathing by cancer. With their potentials unfulfilled, women and wives are going to be hard and even harder and hardest. Why could my mom not get higher education? Why could her not get a skill? Do we think she is destined with no potential? I do not think so. I see that she is good at mathematic and doing business. Anyway her potentials still remain unfulfilled, but luckily she is visionary enough to send her sons to school and at lease to catch up some potential which she herself could not do. My argument based upon my mom’s life story is that women are back-up forces to men in household economy in case that men disappeared, and with fulfilled potential women can cook something better. They can make various kinds of cooked functional citizens in accordance to her potentials.

Let me go straight talking about children and unfulfilled potentials. Not only women but also children need inclusion in seeking fulfilled potentials. We cannot know whether there are reborn versions of Elbert Einstein, John Nash, Adam Smith or Elvis Presley hidden inside the trash bin in Cambodia. Who knows? As a kid I did not know who I was destined to be and what I would become until I was able to go to university and then work for an NGO where I started to see my potentials of what I was good at and what I could contribute to. Who knows I could pass high school exam? Who knows I can go to university? Who knows I can earn a scholarship for MA? But how many people can reach this destination? I felt brokenhearted seeing my friends at primary school and high school drop school one by one. Kids cannot know who they are and what potentials they hold until we the adults guide them—help them dig it up.

My final remarks for Cambodia to recover is that we should use full potentials, full forces as fuel to generate the growth machine. Otherwise, the machine will not produce its maximum power. We Cambodians experienced great loss in Khmer Rouge regime, which seems like my family lost my dad. We are fatherless and potential-less. The suffix “less” implies loss and nothingness. To recover we have to, like my mom, learn from the past, enjoy the present and prepare for future. We are mother-ful. The suffix “ful” may mean “full”. We have to use ‘full’ resource we have—women and children in need of fulfilled potentials. Fatherless Motherful is not the title of my family life story but also the title for Cambodia which I think should be “full” rather than “less”. If we lose, please don’t snooze but use all “full” potentials. If something is “less” you have to be “full” on the others to make balance. We can be more than what we are destined to be.