Cambodia in Seattle—Putting Bones to Rest

A week before I moved from Seattle to Tucson, I decided it was time to finally put to rest the bones that I had picked up when I was walking through the Killing Fields in 2007. It was before disaster tourism had struck Phnom Penh and there were only two other people in that gigantic field, so silent a place that I could hear the buzzing of insects. I wanted something physical to hold that would link me to this sacred ground so I picked up three small pebbles. They’ve been in a special small container for the past twenty years and after I returned to Seattle in 2011, several people told me they were bone fragments that had been weathered into the shapes of tiny rocks. 

I wanted to take them to a temple for the prayers that are said for the dead but not to a Thai, Lao, or Vietnamese temple. Finally last year I read about a Khmer temple in Seattle, googled it to find its location but couldn’t discover times when I could visit. Last week I looked again and learned that it was open every day, all day, and it was on a bus route.

 So I set off to find it, with the three little bones placed in a velvet drawstring bag. The bus let me off at Juneau Street on the far end of Beacon Hill and then it was a long walk up and down hills before I saw flags and the roof of a building painted in bright Khmer colors. As I walked toward it, I saw a monk sitting opposite another man who was formally dressed, as Southeast Asian men always are when they want to show respect. The monk spoke no English and no Thai (which a surprising number of Cambodians do when from the Battambang/Siem Reap region so I always give that a try). In desperation, I threw myself on the mercy of the older man and he served as interpreter. 

 The monk, who turned out to be the abbot, seemed reluctant to take the bones and I insisted, “But this was a Khmer person who needs your prayers and blessings.” The older man nodded in agreement and continued to plead the case. At last he said, “The temple will take them but you must bring them back in a glass jar with a lid, and put them on white cotton. You know, the kind ladies use for makeup,” and he pantomimed using nail polish remover. “The jar must be clear so people can see them.” And once again I emphasized that they needed blessings, not to exist as an exhibit, and the man assured me they would be given the right prayers.

 So back on the bus I went and carefully washed out a jar that I’d used for coffee beans, made a bed of cotton balls within it, and nestled the three bones in the middle. I put the jar in my purse so it would remain upright during our next journey and returned to the bus stop once again.

 This time when I reached the temple there was no one to be seen but as I approached the door, a voice called to me from the top of a staircase that led up to a cleared parking area. I told this man why I was there and that I wanted to see the abbot. “He’s sleeping,” he replied, “I’ll call his mobile,” and soon the abbot came outdoors, looking drowsy, wearing a wool cap and heavy socks to augment his robes for warmth. He accepted the jar but semed more interested in a book I brought--Kraig Leib’s photography book on Cambodia, which I loved but wanted to give to the temple library, since there are young Khmer here who have never been to that country.

 The man who had made the phone call showed me around the temple grounds, which were set in the middle of a thick grove of trees and bordered with spirit houses. Meanwhile the abbot stood nearby, cigarette in his mouth and poring over Kraig’s photos with the jar tucked casually under one arm. When I left, he walked ahead of me and I was a bit horrified to see him swinging the jar of bones as though it were a bucket of water. For years I’d treated those fragments as though they were made of spun glass, from Cambodia to Thailand to Seattle, then back to Thailand and then Seattle again...always with reverence. 

 But I understood I had done all I could. Whatever happened next was no longer up to me, and I was almost certain the bones would receive the prayers they needed in order to finally be at rest. ~Janet Brown