the saddest thing he ever saw

Last year I went on a trip to East Malaysia to do some jungle trekking and hiking up a hill to catch a glimpse of a cluster of unique rock formations with 3 other friends. During the trip we met our trekking and hiking guide, Richard. He wasn't an ordinary guide having completed his masters in the studies of rocks and was already in the process of completing is PhD in the same subject.

Apart from being a guide, he spends the remaining of his time doing extreme and adventure caving to study the formations of stone and how to preserve them. To add on to his accolades is the fact that he serves with the Malaysian FRU (the Federal Reserve Unit). The FRU is a voluntary team that provides assistance to the police or soldiers during times of security or rescue missions.

During our stay at Camp 5 for our trek up the Mulu Pinnacles, we had a good conversation to kill time at the camp because there was simply nothing to do because it became pitch black by the time it was 6pm. Hence, talking to the tourist around me and Richard was the only way to kill time after dinner.

I think most of us would know about the 2004 tsunami that hit Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Maldives and Thailand. Richard was sent to Phuket, Thailand to help with the rescue mission. He was with the rescue dive team.

He was telling us about the bad stench from all the dead bodies and from the sea water that washed up Phuket island. He was there for a month throughout the entire rescue mission diving up and down the flooded island to pull out dead bodies of drown victims of the tsunami. Throughout all his training with the FRU and, search and rescue missions he has done, he was never prepared for what he was going to see in Phuket. What he was was the saddest thing he ever saw in his life.

During one of the dive missions, he dived into a flooded house to pull out the dead bodies and he saw something he was never prepared for. He saw two dead bodies but not just any ordinary dead body. What he saw was a paled mother hugging her paled baby and the look on her face was eerily calm. That scene was simply too much for him to take and that dive became the last dive mission in Phuket. Richard decided to opt out of dive missions and continued on land.

Although what he saw was the saddest thing he ever saw, it was also touching because it was the ultimate display of a mother's love for her child. From the way she was hugging her child, he could tell she was doing all the best she could to keep her child safe, knowing it was probably futile. It was sad yet touching............