Born in 1978, towards the end of the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, my older brother entered the world at one of its low points in history. The physical circumstances were unfavorable – my mom had already endured three years of malnutrition and sunrise-to-sunset forced labor. All “intelligent” persons, including doctors, had been killed three years ago and there were no hospitals or medicines. Sickness and death were well known.

My brother had trouble entering the world. (But then, who would want to enter the world at that time?) He was oriented the wrong way or something like that. There was no “professional” to help with the delivery. One woman was there to help my mom, but she was inexperienced. My mom had sent for an older, very experienced woman to come help, but she was at another delivery. Luckily, that delivery finished quickly and she was able to come afterwards, though late. She pushed and manipulated my mother’s body to make the baby come out. Giving birth was very dangerous, and my mom was just so relieved that she had survived the process. Many other women had died during childbirth.

But my brother did not make it.
He lived a day or so.
He didn’t eat.
He let out some cries.
He took in a limited number of breaths
…before he breathed his last.

….

In college, I wrote a family history paper for my American Women’s History class. I wrote about my family’s time in Cambodia and how, because of their family unity and strength, no one in my mom or dad’s immediate family had died. During one of my professor’s reviews, she wrote “except for the baby boy” in the margins. That caught me a bit, and I’ve thought about it often in the years since then.

I don’t know why I didn’t count my brother’s death as a death. I guess I was thinking of the “net” life. Entering into the rule of the Khymer Rouge, my family had X number of members and when the nightmare ended, the same X number survived. Simple math. Or perhaps in my young mind I thought my brother didn’t have much of a chance anyway given the conditions he was born in, so his death was not really a death as he really had no chance to begin with.

….

But his life counts. He was a person. And it has become clear to me that his death resulted from the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. He would have had such better chances for living otherwise.

And I’ve come to realize that you can’t just simply think about “net” life based on the numbers before and after. In every generation there is growth (cultural, economic, population, etc). Any growth that would have taken place but was destroyed/kept from happening is a part of the damage that was done.

No written record of my brother’s life exists (the most is perhaps this blog entry.) No birth certificate, no birth announcement, no photo, no record of death. In those reported death tolls from the Cambodian Holocaust (estimated 2 million+, with an additional 60,000+ dying from starvation AFTERWARDS), I wonder whether those babies who were born and died or lost in miscarriages were also counted.

….

My mom says I looked a lot like my older brother when I was born. I asked my mom whether she gave her baby a name. “No.. we just called him Di Di.” “Di Di” means “little brother” in Chinese.

Di Di, you’ll always be my big brother.