As a follow up to my comment response in my last post: This is the cemetery. You can't see the ground really, but where the grass clears there are two parallel graves that run 15 to 20 feet. Each grave is a rise in the ground the width of a body, edged with wood and surrounded by miscellaneous crosses. There is one large, fairly new, headstone in the corner of the cemetery which includes the names and ages of all who were killed (maybe 50 people, maybe more maybe less) from children to the elderly. Perhaps the only testament to their lives, other than surviving relations. My grandmother at 17 witnessed the massacre and barely escaped. (She's one tough lady.)This was her village.
The cemetery is in the middle of the hills. There is no road or path to it, although it was possible to walk on some tractor markings in neighboring farms. The entire surrounding area felt like the Sound of Music. The cemetery is in this huddle of trees, offering shade. The sun was bright and the air was fresh. It was horrible to imagine the massacre, but the peace and beauty in this spot in the mountains was an odd juxtaposition to the graves. I thought how lucky anyone would be to live here, and how terrible it was for troops to march in and massacre this people. My trip was a revelation of beauty and terror.
I wrote a 28-page biography of sorts of my father last year for a nonfiction class, and it unraveled a lot of truths about my family, my history, and all of the trials and tribulations they went through to get to where they/we are now. Of greater interest is how and why my parents have hidden all of that from me and my brother for over 20 years. Blew my mind, to put it in the simplest and least expressive terms.
ReplyDeleteHow did your parents react to this? Did they have to deal with this burden of history growing up? Did they go through a similar experience to yours?