Steve Gill

silter

Issue date: 9/20/2007

Steve has contributed this piece about how he feels now.

My name is Steve Gill and I am currently joint chair of Tsunami Support UK. I have been with the group from its inception and am keen to make it a more inclusive organisation reaching more of the many hundreds of people who may have been involved in the tsunami in some way and whose
lives may continue to be affected by those events. At our recent summer event, we discussed how we might reach out to more people and one suggestion was that we should write a brief description of ourselves, the reason for our involvement with the group and include a description of how we are dealing with the aftermath of the tsunami.

I was on a holiday with my wife Heather and her daughter, in a beach bungalow, at the southernmost tip of Phuket Island. We had gone there at the invitation of Heather's brother, to meet him and his father as well as both of their partners. It was a kind of second honeymoon. We had been married for just nine months.

Luckily, the in-laws had gone on a submarine sightseeing trip, early on Boxing Day morning and so, when the wave struck there were only three of us in the bungalow. According to later descriptions, the wave split into two and one part came around an island in the bay and scoured the beach, length wise, at between two and three hundred miles per hour collecting buildings and trees as it came and wielding them with enormous force.

We were behind the bungalow at the time of the main impact and were all swept away, including our landlady, who had been advised, by phone, of the damage caused by the early waves and had rushed to see what could be done. Heather was killed and Leoni our landlady died with her. My step daughter and I survived although we were both injured and separated.

I spent twelve days in hospital in Thailand and returned home to my wife's funeral and to a family devastated by events. I was also still in need of medical treatment and was unable to walk for some time and then unable to work for many weeks after that.

Tsunami Support UK was born out of the Tsunami Support Group, which was formed by The Red Cross under the guidance of the government. Once the legal requirements that led to its being established, had been satisfied, the running of the residual organisation was turned over to those survivors who wished to take the reins.

It is no exaggeration to say that the contact with and support of fellow victims, survivor and the bereaved, helped me to get to the point at which I am sitting down to write this.

It remains, for me, a source of frustration and disappointment that many hundreds of people affected by the tragic events of Boxing Day 2004, are unaware that the organisation exists and unable to gain some of the support that I and many of my fellow members have found so useful; perhaps even vital.

I am now starting to look forward rather than back and outward rather than inward, but the process goes on. I still am looking for the life that used to be mine although without the person with whom I planned to share it. I need to find the things I love and to embrace them, rather than distance myself from them because I loved so much to share them.

I hope to help others who are on a similar journey and to find strength and understanding. I don't think we can live life to the full until we can start to plan again, though without guilt about the lost loved one, with whom our now wrecked plans were to be shared. In Heather's memory I erected a stone on the rocks above the beach where Heather died. On that stone I wrote “Our future died, but love endures". Many of us feel that same loss and mourn the plans we lost with those who would have shared them. The many changes that we may feel; in relationships, in work, in interests and perspectives, that characterise so many of our experiences, are confusing and upsetting. They are part of a new reality.

The tsunami marked for most of us and certainly for me, an end of the life the life I planned. Everything after the tsunami is new, unplanned and unwanted. For me, the process is about finding myself and getting to know the person who now lives at my house; inside my skin. It should be a simple task but I can't always work out what makes him tick. I try to reach back into my memory banks for clues, but most of what I find there does not seem relevant and much of what I expect to find there is blurred by memories of recent events. It's all too long ago and in a previous life. Sometimes it's all I can do, to work out which tense I am living in. I don't look forward as I did. I can't look back very far and the present just does not make sense as it should. What tense do I live in?
I am bereaved?
I was bereaved?
I will always be bereaved?
The question is not one I can answer at present but the process of discovery goes on.

One of the positive things to come out of this experience has been the removal of so many certainties about what my life is or should be and the most difficult thing about living with the aftermath is the uncertainty about what my life is or should be. It's not easy to go on a second honeymoon and come home alone. It's not easy to be reborn at the age of fifty one. I am on a journey I didn't choose to make, to a place I don't know about and am not certain I want to visit. Call it a journey or a process, it's likely to be a lifelong exercise and along the way, it will be good to know that there are a few fellow travellers who are sharing the experience and who can understand, support and help each other.