Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

by Susan Cain

After all those years in the field, he started to feel that his work was futile: There were always more bad actors, more mutilated bodies, more indifferent onlookers. Despite good intentions, no heroic organizations, no noble countries, no individuals with pure motives; things could turn brutal anywhere, anytime. He came home. But “home” meant something different now. Home was friends and family, it was the pleasant shock of on-demand air-conditioning, water running from the kitchen faucet, hot or cold, whenever you pleased. But home was also the Garden of Eden after Eve ate the apple. Never forget, we say. But forgetting wasn’t Ken’s issue: He couldn’t forget what he’d seen; it rarely left his mind. The only choice was to write it all down, to record what he’d witnessed. As he wrote, he kept a framed photo on his desk, a vast field of Rwandan bones. That photo’s still there, all these years later.