I put out the light. Images of the day are running through my head. The jungle, the mountain, the orange man, Chris. It is as if at this moment he embodies all the men I have loved and lost. All the men who have loved me. Pasje, my father, Jaime too. I decide to ask Chris if I can adopt him as my brother.
The next day we meet Mr. Tan for breakfast. He has brought three other Vietnam Airlines officials: one local gentleman, who is acting as if he is Mr. Tan’s boss, and two ladies from Hanoi. Mrs. Anh, an executive for corporate affairs, is the one who accompanied Jack but refused to climb the mountain a second time with us. She acts quite cold. Mrs. Mai, international affairs, is married to the former Vietnamese ambassador to the Netherlands. She smiles a lot.
We have a polite meal, exchanging pleasantries about each other’s countries, but I can’t help feeling resentment underneath. For Pasje, for Hamish, for Jack. For all my wounds.
They turn it into an official ceremony by giving me a gold-plated pin from Vietnam Airlines and a hand-stitched tablecloth. They ask a waiter to take a picture.
“Cheese!” we all say, standing in a line, me holding up the pin.
BAO DAI’S VILLAS
VIETNAM, 2006
After the breakfast, Chris and I go to that fateful palace, the hotel Pasje booked thirteen years ago for our romantic vacation.
“Bao Dai’s Villas is one of the few remaining examples of French Colonial architecture in Vietnam,” my guidebook says. “Built in 1923 as a holiday resort for the last Vietnamese king and queen, it sits on a promontory of 120 thousand square meters of lush vegetation. The villas overlook the South China Sea and its coastal islands, and enjoy sea breeze all year round.” In the taxi, Chris tells me how enthusiastic Pasje was about our trip, how worried he was about the plane ride to this place because of my claustrophobia. Worried I would stop him in his tracks on the runway.
Why hadn’t I?
Bao Dai’s Villas, Nha Trang, Vietnam, 2006
When the taxi drives up the circular driveway, I can’t believe my eyes. What an enchanting place! It couldn’t be any more romantic. A palace on a cliff with the crispy blue sea crashing at its side. Beautiful gardens. What a perfect combination. Oh, Pasje, you did such a good job. I wish you could see it with your own eyes.
I am overcome with a feeling of waste. Tremendous waste. My eyes are burning. I walk away from Chris, who discreetly stays behind, over toward the water. I watch how the water hits the rocks. My favorite sight. Pasje knew.
I pick up some stones and throw them angrily into the sea. Why? Why him? Why us? What did he do? What did I do? Tears are rolling down my face. I throw more stones. Almost violently now. Rock after rock. More and more. Waves of anger, frustration, grief. Then I realize what I am doing and start laughing. At myself. It suddenly seems bizarre that, just like thirteen years ago, I kept my act together on that mountain and now I am letting myself go at sea level. Floodgates burst wide open! Like thirteen years ago, when I saw my mother’s face, I let go so much I almost died.
I straighten my back and gesture to Chris that I want to check out the buildings. By myself. They are great—not too luxurious, just right. It would have been perfect. Good old Pasje!
I wander back to the sea and sit down on a rock. I see the waves crashing against the cliff. The tears well up again. Now for Jaime. Why can’t we overcome our differences and go beyond the opposites? Go beyond our personalities? Embrace the paradox of something being both right and wrong, of someone being strong and loving and also angry and uptight. Of someone being messy and chaotic but also responsible? Will we be able to find the middle? Or meet in the beyond, like we used to?
As long as we live, there will be duality. It is the tension of opposites at work. Too much tension now, but that’s how things get created, and how a balance is achieved. Eventually.
We are all like separate waves until we crash and we become equal parts of the ocean again. Waves only appear to be separate for the short period between when they form and when they crash. It is such a short ride, life.
For now, I live happily with what I have. Just as there once was a Pasje and Annette, there has been a Jaime and Annette. Once they were strong together; they just aren’t right now. Just like after losing Pasje through death, even if I end up losing Jaime through life, I won’t lose him altogether. He has given me too much for that. A love so strong I’ll carry it with me. It is there, like Mozart’s music, which can still move people even though the artist is long dead. Perhaps at this moment in time, in these earthly frames, Jaime and I cannot be together. But that doesn’t make what came before any less meaningful. I take a deep breath, stand up from the rock, and take in the beauty of the waves.
Reflection: Waves
When I discovered Coldplay, I walked around all day, listening through headphones. And with tears in my eyes.
I thought how Pasje would have liked “Clocks.” If only I could call him and let him hear. It was partly for him that I kept up with new music. His eyes used to well up when he found a new sound. He would make me listen. He would look at me with eager eyes, hoping I would be as enthusiastic as he was. But I needed to hear something a couple times to like it. He liked new.
“Old becomes background music,” he used to say. “You don’t really hear it anymore.”
I remember when he discovered U2. Before anyone else knew we had. How he said, “Listen to that voice, that new sound.” His eyes were filled with tears and with such tenderness, even for the little boy on the cover. We played U2 at his funeral. Only at the age of forty-something, listening to Coldplay, did I finally understand how he felt.
It still hurts to recall Pasje by listening to his songs. They bring him back so vividly. Bring back his love. Our love. Still there but on a different frequency.
I can bring the old Jaime back too. The way I bring back Pasje.
But it costs me more effort to bring Jaime back. He is alive. And kicking. Alive but not at home. The wound from our gradual separation is open and might stay open. Losing through life can be more painful than losing through death. The grief hits me the same. Unannounced. Like a wave. So I just have to stay still in this one too—let it come over me.
There is much love to live on, both past and present. Past for me. Present for our children. And I can still put on our music, sit on our balcony, look at our restaurants, our opera house, our city. And bring it all back.
I carry it all with me. It is there and it will always be there. Whatever happens.
Reflection: Lucky
Once upon a time, I wanted to go see my fiancé in Vietnam. Lucky. I had to postpone the trip. Unlucky.
I went one month later. Via Hong Kong. Uncharacteristically, I did not miss my flight, even though it left two hours earlier than planned. Lucky. If I had missed it, I might not have been on that domestic flight in Vietnam and I would not have crashed into that mountain. Unlucky.
I survived. Lucky.
My fiancé died. Everyone else did too. Very unlucky.
I found love again. Very lucky. I may be losing it. Unlucky.
I also made lots of money. Lucky. I spent some, lucky enough, but I ended up losing half in 2008 with a bad investor. Unlucky. I got two beautiful children. Very lucky. One turned out to be autistic. Unlucky. He has shown me a depth in human life in a way a typical boy would not have done. How lucky!
So what does that make me? Lucky or unlucky?
THE HELICOPTER
VIETNAM, 2006
In the van leaving Nha Trang for the airport, Mr. Tan, Chris, and I talk as if we are about to part as old friends. We all agree it has been an extraordinary experience. We vow to revisit the mountain with our daughters one day. “Once they are old enough and before we are too old,” Chris suggests.
“There is one more person I’d like you to meet,” Mr. Tan says when we are walking over to his office in the airport building. “Do you remember the helicopter?”
“I am so sorry, I don’t,” I answer. “Until I got to V
ietnam I thought that was just another rumor.”
“Oh hell, it wasn’t,” Chris intervenes. “I heard it taking off! I was called to come to the offices of Vietnam Airlines. When I arrived in the crisis room, people were listening in on headphones. A team of doctors and officials was on the way to the crash site in a military chopper.”
Mr. Tan adds, “The daughter of the physician who was on that helicopter works for me now. He and the seven other souls aboard died in that crash.”
I have no time to let it sink in. A beautiful young girl walks out. When she sees me, she bursts into tears. I take her in my arms and hug her. She says, sobbing against my chest, “My papa went out to rescue you, and he never came back!”
Reflection: Taking Loss, Gaining Love
“No pain, no gain,” we used to say on Wall Street. Today I am still convinced there is a great yield in taking a loss. When the loss is taken consciously. By facing and defining, not by cutting or denying. After properly taking a loss, there is always some kind of compensation, an expansion even. I now know how much I have gained as a result of my losses.
When I found myself alone in the Vietnamese jungle, I had to accept that reality in order to survive. I remained calm. I stayed still with it. I shifted my focus. I could see the beauty. I surrendered myself unconditionally. And that was when it happened: I felt connected; I had the most heavenly experience on earth.When I lost my fiancé, I was forced to take a loss on the future we had envisioned together. I had to go through the process of grieving thoroughly in order to build another future. I did. And then he stayed with me.
I also had to take a loss on the future I envisioned for my son. Only then could I accept him for who he is. I learned to see what is there. Not only do I accept him, I celebrate him daily as a gift.
Taking a loss is not the same as cutting your losses and letting go is not the same as moving on. You have to consciously take your loss in order to integrate what is lost. Stay still with it and let it hurt. Don’t deny or reject the situation as if it should not have happened. When you do that, you harden both your heart and your mind, and you cannot be open. In order to stay open, you must stay present. When you stay present, you can see the beauty—the flip side of the loss.
If you know what it’s like to be hurt, then you can imagine the pain of another. When you stay open, you can connect to others and so find the beauty in the connection.
When you stay open, every loss of a loved one gives an option to peel away a layer, revealing more love. Like peeling an artichoke, with unconditional love at its heart.
Nothing stays lost forever. Whatever or whomever we have lost becomes an integral part of us and will always be present. As Einstein proved, energy cannot be destroyed; it changes form.
Loss actually brings you closer to the love you had—and still have—than ever before. The bigger the attachment, the bigger the feeling of loss; the bigger the loss, the deeper the love. Grieving equals loving.
TAKING OFF AGAIN
VIETNAM, 2006
We are flying back to Ho Chi Minh City. In a small plane this time. I don’t mind. I have not even requested the front row or an aisle seat. I just have to look out the window, see the sea, and see the jungle. I put my purse in the net on the seat before me. LIFE VEST, it says. My eyes search for the exit sign. It is in English. Chris is sitting next to me, reading a paper. He seems eager to get back to his family. He has never been away from them for this long. I am very grateful for the sacrifice. I’ll miss him. I still have a few more days to go before I’ll see my family, flying back to New York via Singapore and Amsterdam, where I’ll stay with my dear mother to tell her the stories.
I have many stories to tell. So many things were not what they had seemed. In a good way. There are many more versions of the truth. But then, isn’t the truth multifaceted anyway? In the end, everyone’s intentions were pure. Chris, Mr. Tan, the orange man—each one giving without condition.
Getting to the top of my mountain: Was it mind over matter, or was I carried up by those who thought of me? Both, I believe. In the same way, it was all kinds of love that kept me going thirteen years ago—a bed of it, for and from many. That love ultimately enabled me to surrender. To the jungle, to the moment, to life, to death.
We are all physically, mentally, and emotionally much stronger than we think we are. Nobody likes to be tested, but once we are, we realize we are stronger than we ever thought possible, and we come to value and appreciate the test.
Climbing the mountain was all about the process of getting there.
It allowed me to connect to all the people whose lives were touched and intertwined by the airplane crash. We are all instrumental in each other’s stories. And everyone’s story is instrumental for all of us. Both positively and negatively. Another eight people died rescuing me, leaving that sweet girl—and how many more?—fatherless. My story is about her and everyone else involved.
The jungle has taught me to transcend, to surrender, and to connect vertically, to the universe, to God. It has taught me where to get energy.
Maxi has taught me about compassion, to connect laterally to others. Where to give energy.
That is what I am here for: to connect to people as equals, not to get a kick out of my “higher” self. Besides, my happiest moments have been when I had no self at all.
I look out the window, through my own reflection. The sea is getting more and more distant. How idyllic, I think nostalgically. It must be one of the most beautiful bays in the world. Right underneath us stretches the endless jungle. I try to make out anything specific, but I can’t. Just giant patches of green. How big is the nowhere we have been in the middle of—and beautiful.
Objects are visible because of the light that reflects off them.
Myra, Chris, Mr. Cao, Mr. Tan, Numachi, doctors, and nurses. Maxi’s teachers, my family, my friends, Jaime, Joosje, and Maxi. I am only a reflection in your eyes.
AFTERWORD
By seventeen-year-old Joosje Lupa
Years of slash and burn have transformed O Kha Mountain, thinning the dense jungle into which VN 474 crashed more than twenty years ago.
It was this new O Kha that I saw in August 2014, when my mother’s Vietnamese publishers, First News, invited her to Ho Chi Minh City for the press release of the translation of Turbulence.
“I won’t go without you, of course,” my mother told me matter-of-factly. She wanted to show me the place where her life had taken a turn, and for me to meet her rescuers, without whom I would not exist. The publisher agreed, if I would write an afterword from my point of view, as one of the birth children of the story.
Our trip was remarkably appropriate for that month: in Buddhism, the seventh month on the lunar calendar is the ghost month, when the realm of the dead and the realm of the living are thought to be open, and the deceased are believed to visit the living.
192 Hours, Ho Chi Minh City Airport, August 9, 2014
Flashing cameras. A poster with the words ANNETTE HERFKENS and an airplane smashed across it. From the horseshoe of people waiting to welcome their loved ones emerges a small crowd, every member equipped with a camera or recording device. I watch as the horde engulfs my mother. Questions start immediately: “How does it feel to be back in Vietnam? What are your emotions at this moment?”
My mother answers with a broad smile; only I can see how surprised she is. “The last time I came to Vietnam, I was fearful, but now I am thrilled to be here.” She pulls me forward. “And this time I’ve brought my daughter!”
A man hands her a large bouquet of flowers wrapped in colorful paper. “Fresh, new,” he says with enthusiasm. Another man hands her a translated copy of her book, and a third starts interviewing her for a TV camera. First News representatives step in and warmly guide us to our van. We gape at each other in amazement as the car sets out into bustling traffic, entering the swarm of motorcycles that dominate the streets.
We stay at the Continental Hotel, old-worldly and grand, with
wooden panels and broad marble stairs. It feels as if I am walking onto the set of a movie I’ve watched over and over again; I can see the scenes running in my head. It is the hotel where my father stayed in 1992 when he learned my mother was still alive. I imagine him here with his long hair, his white T-shirt, and his determination. The only person convinced against all odds that she hadn’t died. My mother also stayed here in 2006; I imagine her before she went back to the mountain, alone and apprehensive, the climb looming over her. I was at home in New York then, only nine years old and unaware of the huge undertaking she was facing.
We are given no time to settle into our beautiful suite overlooking the colonial opera house surrounded by buzzing traffic. First News has fully scheduled our eight-day trip. After two interviews in the lobby, we are driven to the First News office to meet its president, Mr. Nguyen Phuoc. He sits at the head of a large, wooden table with a cigarette in one hand and a cell phone in the other. A large painting of Ho Chi Minh looms over him. He welcomes us literally with open arms, enthusiastically embracing us both. He explains that the tight schedule is to give as many Vietnamese the opportunity to meet us. He fixes his gaze on my mother:
“We love your story and way of thinking. We want people here to know about you.”
Atonement
Early the next morning is the press conference, marking the official release of the book. It takes place in a large room, decorated with floor-to-ceiling posters of my mother’s name and picture coupled with the book’s cover and Vietnamese title: 192 Hours. It is so crowded that people are jostling to stand in the back. Representatives from all the major Vietnamese TV stations and newspapers are in attendance. So is Chris, Pasje’s friend who climbed up the mountain with my mother in 2006. Chris’s warmth and familiar Dutch sense of humor quickly make him feel like an uncle and puts me at ease. My mother gives a short opening speech, expressing how lucky she feels to be here with me. She ends with: “I have lost a lot in this country, but I have also gained something big: new insight into life and death, and lessons that still help me to this day.”
Turbulence Page 23