Pasa Lao ພາສາລາວ

Before he died, Andy learned to speak Lao fluently and was learning Khmu and perhaps a few other ethnic languages. Pasa Lao, as the language is known in Lao, is the language of the Lao people and the official language of Laos PDR. Lao is a Tai language of the Kradai language family. Today, there are between 15 and 25 million people who speak Lao, if you include the people of Isan, in the northeast of Thailand. It is a tonal language, with most dialects using six tones: middle, high, rising, high rising, high falling, and low falling.

When Andy died, Chip, Disty, and I each and all decided we would like to learn Lao. I can't remember exactly how we all came to this decision, but I remember looking through Andy's things that came back with his body—language books, music tapes, boxes with Lao print, a wooden token, a Lao computer keyboard—each of them speaking to me: Learn Lao, Dad. And over the last many months, I have faithfully followed the clues I am being given to the scavenger hunt of meaning that is now my new life.

Through many connections, including the people we are joining in the Sukhapaab project, we found Wat Buddhabhavana, where we discovered Venerable Ajahn Mangkone Dhammadharo (in photo at left) and the other Lao monks and people who are now patiently teaching us Lao. But woe to poor Ajahn Bounxay and Ajahn Wern, our beloved teachers, I am an intolerable student, with a poor memory and a laughably deaf ear for the tones and unusual sounds of a beautiful musical language. Nevertheless, the hour and a half that I spend in Lao class every week makes me joyful. I have learned the alphabet and can read and type, now, slowly. Enough so that I can start to prepare books for our journey and find meaning in helping to publish medical books and help distribute content in Pasa Lao through print, web, and cell phone, with a lot of help from my friends.

Connected

We are all connected. On March 7 of this year, a week after my son Andy died in a motorcycle accident in Bokeo Province in Laos, there was a memorial service. Andy was loved by many and, not surprisingly, the Old Town Hall of Bedford, MA was overflowing with family and friends of Andy, of Chip (my younger son), of Disty (my wife), and of me. I don't remember everything about that day, but what stands out is that I floated on a river of love. Each person who came to hug me and whom I hung onto like a life raft was connected through their own loss: fathers, mothers, siblings, children, friends, whomever. And each whispered a story that drew me up and reminded me of how important it is, even in the face of inevitable loss, to love. And as I bobbed in the fresh, dark and turbid river of loss—nauseous, out-of-body, and barely conscious, I could feel the rivers of each of our lives rushing together, tributaries in what I've learned is life's greatest river. Without our family and friends, we surely would have gone under. And now we are connected like never before.

This November 12, Chip, Disty, and I go to Laos to honor Andy. We join Sukhapaab: Disty teaching medicine, Chip teaching English, and I publishing medical books and blogging—each of us trying to connect with our lost beloved brother and son through the people he loved and the place he intended to invest with his life, Laos.