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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Heartbreaking, horrifying, unfathomable… I did like how it slowly changes as she moves in time past the event. Sigh.
A very moving look at grief and healing, love and life and death. A wrenching portrait written in the author's unique voice as she tries to face life after her children, husband and parents die in the boxing day tsunami.
The wave is a natural disaster, of course, but it’s there in the grief too. I’m guilty of the same crime as so many of the author’s relatives - tiring of her grief. She has poignant recollections, but they are hers.
This is a memoir by a survivor of the 2005 tsunami in Sri Lanka. Deraniyagala lost her whole family in the tsunami in mere seconds. Her parents, her husband, and her two small boys. She also lost her best friend. All as they attempted to flee the beach hotel they were staying at.
The book covers her grieving process from that time which is still going on in some form. It was a very interesting read and I really got to know her now dead family members through what she had written. I also think she is an extremely strong woman to still be alive and functioning after so much has happened to her.
The book covers her grieving process from that time which is still going on in some form. It was a very interesting read and I really got to know her now dead family members through what she had written. I also think she is an extremely strong woman to still be alive and functioning after so much has happened to her.
Initially I struggled to get into the story, I was a bit disappointed by the choppy writing and the reaction of the author directly after the tsunami hit.
I understood that she would be in shock and that her reaction was a coping mechanism however I was still taken aback at how she just immediately accepted it as a fact that her entire family was dead. No frantic searching the hospitals, morgues, swampland just a resignation that they are all gone.
It was not like I tried to cling to my children as they were torn from my arms, it was not like they were yanked from me, not like I saw them dead. They simply vanished from my life forever.
This haunted her later on making her doubt her love and value as a mother, spouse and daughter.
You always assume you know how you would react in a situation like this but hopefully most of us never have to find out what it feels like to lose your children, husband and parents in one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent history.
This book is an honest, if difficult, account of what grief looks like, the author does not try and sugar coat her reactions, faults and self-blame nor did she hide the fact that she really didn’t want to live with this situation.
I know of no other book that pens down the personal horrors of this tragedy so honestly and beautifully as this one even if the first part was a bit odd for me.
I understood that she would be in shock and that her reaction was a coping mechanism however I was still taken aback at how she just immediately accepted it as a fact that her entire family was dead. No frantic searching the hospitals, morgues, swampland just a resignation that they are all gone.
It was not like I tried to cling to my children as they were torn from my arms, it was not like they were yanked from me, not like I saw them dead. They simply vanished from my life forever.
This haunted her later on making her doubt her love and value as a mother, spouse and daughter.
You always assume you know how you would react in a situation like this but hopefully most of us never have to find out what it feels like to lose your children, husband and parents in one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent history.
This book is an honest, if difficult, account of what grief looks like, the author does not try and sugar coat her reactions, faults and self-blame nor did she hide the fact that she really didn’t want to live with this situation.
I know of no other book that pens down the personal horrors of this tragedy so honestly and beautifully as this one even if the first part was a bit odd for me.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
What I learned from this book: Losing one's children, husband, and parents in a tsunami is terrible.
What I didn't learn from this book: How one moves past that loss and begins reassembling one's life.
It seems a bit uncharitable to be picky about this, given the losses that the author suffered, and the bravery that it must have taken to write it all down for the world to see. What's missing, though, is any sense of how she got from there to here. Yes, she lost her entire family and was alternatively suicidal, catatonic, or manic with grief. Totally understandable. So how did she move from that stage to the point, eight years later, where she could participate in life again, inhabit her family's house, see family friends, and so on.
The descriptions of her grief were searing, honest, and compelling, but that is only half the story, as far as I'm concerned.
What I didn't learn from this book: How one moves past that loss and begins reassembling one's life.
It seems a bit uncharitable to be picky about this, given the losses that the author suffered, and the bravery that it must have taken to write it all down for the world to see. What's missing, though, is any sense of how she got from there to here. Yes, she lost her entire family and was alternatively suicidal, catatonic, or manic with grief. Totally understandable. So how did she move from that stage to the point, eight years later, where she could participate in life again, inhabit her family's house, see family friends, and so on.
The descriptions of her grief were searing, honest, and compelling, but that is only half the story, as far as I'm concerned.
"Now I sit in this garden in New York, and I hear them, jubilant, gleeful, on our lawn."
“And everywhere, on bare ground and between cracks in the floors, tiny pink and white flowers that flourish along the seashore forced their way up. Mini mal, or graveyard flowers, they are called. I resented this renewal. How dare you heal.”
“I think I also don't confess because I am still so unbelieving of what happened. I am still aghast. I stun myself each time I retell the truth to myself, let alone to someone else. So I am evasive in order to spare myself...I can see though that my secrecy does me no favors. It probably makes worse my sense of being outlandish. It confirms to me that it might be abhorrent, my story, or that few can relate to it.”
“And everywhere, on bare ground and between cracks in the floors, tiny pink and white flowers that flourish along the seashore forced their way up. Mini mal, or graveyard flowers, they are called. I resented this renewal. How dare you heal.”
“I think I also don't confess because I am still so unbelieving of what happened. I am still aghast. I stun myself each time I retell the truth to myself, let alone to someone else. So I am evasive in order to spare myself...I can see though that my secrecy does me no favors. It probably makes worse my sense of being outlandish. It confirms to me that it might be abhorrent, my story, or that few can relate to it.”