We have heard all week about the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China.  Death tolls have exceeded 133,000 in Myanmar and as many as 50,000 in China.  Still, these staggering numbers have little meaning until someone puts a face on the tragedies.  Tonight, as I drove home from visiting my father, I listened to a report on National Public Radio that ripped my heart out.

Melissa Block, an NPR reporter, was in China at the time of the “big one” and has been reporting on the catastrophe ever since.  She was on the ground of a Chinese city whose name I can’t remember when she encountered a married couple leading a bulldozer to the site of a wrecked building where they had left their two year old son just before the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.  Block’s voice quivered with emotion as she delivered the story.

Two days had passed since the quake and the couple had been trying the entire time to get heavy machinery to dig for their son and parents.  The man spoke good English and stated firmly that he believed his son had survived.  When they reached the building, he couldn’t contain himself and began digging through the rubble with his hands.  When he reached a dangerous overhang, his wife begged him to wait for the heavy equipment.

Like the results of many earthquakes, the destroyed building sat alone amid others that had received little or no damage.  Chinese military police arrived and began digging, looking for survivors.  Soon, one of the policemen returned to where a large crowd of people waited.  Accosted by the smell of death, he held his hand over his face.  Two other policemen emerged from the wrecked building, carrying the body of a dead person.  The couple shook their heads, realizing it was a neighbor of their parents.

A woman appeared through the crowd and put her arms around the distraught Chinese mother, hugging her in a useless attempt to ease her pain.  Then she gave her a white sheet.

“I know your family is alive, but if they aren’t, cover their faces with this.”

An obviously shaken Block reported that the Chinese believe the living should not look upon the faces of the dead.  A military policeman finally returned from the wreckage of the building with news for the couple.  They had found a child, along with an old man and woman.

The old man had the child in his arms, the old woman one step behind.  They had not survived.  The policeman nodded when the woman asked him if the child was a boy, about two years old.

“Maybe he just fainted,” she said.  “Did you call to him to see if he was alive?”

The policeman just shook his head.

The couple didn’t just cry, they began to wail, loudly, leaving no doubt of their pain and loss.

“He didn’t want me to leave him.  He begged me to take him with me to work,” the woman said, her voice wracked with guilt and pain.

Near tears herself, Melissa Block concluded the story that had no happy ending.

I wasn’t near tears as I listened, I was crying.  The story brought back memories of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Building where far fewer people had died.  Still, like Oklahoma City, every person that perishes in China and Myanmar has brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.  It doesn’t matter to which nationality you belong when you lose a son, a father and mother - it still hurts just as bad.

 http://www.ericwilder.com