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January 3, 2005

Moment a father's heart was broken

The human tragedy resulting from the tsunami just keeps growing. The immense suffering of the victim's loved ones is ever-increasingly harder to report on, and I think that all of us who are writing of this terrible gut-wrenching, tsunami -induced, avalanche of human suffering are doing so with not a dry eye among us. Who among us can accurately gauge or even imagine the agonizing pain of finding your child in an open-air morgue jammed with the victims of such a natural disaster that it can only be described with accompanying terms like epic and biblical? What can be said to even begin to relief him of his seering, nausiating, bewildering agony?

Unfortunately, such horror has only begun for so many of our fellow human beings of all religions, all races, and all nationalities. Human suffering has no borders, no race is immune from it, and no religion is exempt from it's wrath. God has spoken through his nature, but who among us, layman or priest, believer or religious leader, can begin to explain what can't be explained in human terms. For now, all any of us have to serve as our guide is our faith in God, in mankind, or both. It's a time for all of us to be there for eachother, and it seems that our world is doing that in quite a grand manner. But until this is really all over, which could be years for so many, we will continue to hear stories of immense sadness like this one:

- The Daily Telegraph Jan 4, 2005 Australia.
IN an open-air morgue jammed with victims of the tsunamis, an Australian father's search for his missing son ended in heartbreak yesterday.

The hope that had kept Wayne Broadbridge going through the past week finally died when he identified personal effects belonging to his son, AFL footballer Troy Broadbridge.

Troy, 24, who had been honeymooning with his bride Trisha on Phi Phi Island, was among 569 bodies lying beneath a tarpaulin in the tropical heat.

Mr Broadbridge was too distressed to speak. But Troy's uncle John Evans, who had accompanied Mr Broadbridge to the Thai resort of Krabi, said: "We have just discovered that his body is here."

Trisha survived the tsunamis but was evacuated to a hospital in Bangkok suffering multiple injuries.

With the death toll from the disaster passing 144,000 and still rising, Mr Evans linked arms with his brother-in-law after they donned face masks and rubber gloves to enter a marquee where victims in white body bags lay in row upon row.

After searching through digital records of the hundreds of bodies brought from Phi Phi to Krabi's Prachasantisuk Foundation Gardens, Mr Broadbridge was shown a number of personal effects which he identified as Troy's.

The items were then packed away in a plastic bag.

After seeing the body, Mr Evans comforted the distraught father with an arm around his shoulder.Continue reading....

Posted by Hyscience at January 3, 2005 12:00 PM

• Moment a father's heart was broken - Jan 03, 2005