The Tsunami Again

It's the day after Christmas, the house is completely quiet, and I am having my morning coffee, (late morning), and watching 'The View" on TV...every woman's dream moment...the peace and relief that comes the day after Christmas.

I am only half paying attention to the program, when the guest is introduced, and it is Naomi Watts, and I realize the majority of the program is going to be devoted to discussing the movie that has now premiered about the Tsunami.  I have already written about the moment I saw the movie trailers, and how it inspired such a reaction for me.  Apparently this story keeps "finding me", and it has definitely captured my imagination.

Today is actually the eighth anniversary of the day that the tsunami hit that beach in Asia.  It killed nearly 300,000 people.  It is hard to even grasp that number, and to think that it all happened so quickly.  I know I will wind up reading and researching about this event, but for now, I want to share what I had the good fortune to see and hear on this program.

Not only was Naomi Watts on the program, speaking about the story of the woman she portrayed, the woman herself (as well as one of her sons in the audience) was there on the stage, and I found myself compelled and awed by everything she said, and by the spirit of her presentation as a survivor of such a cataclysmic event.  I hope I can convey the things she said that were so inspiring and meaningful to me, so that they are shared and passed forward...


Most of the questions asked of her were about how she felt afterwards and ever since, and her responses were so confident and profound, always deflecting all attention from herself to project a deep-hearted respect for the thousands of people who did not survive that day.

She said, almost fiercely, that she did not assist in the film to tell her family's story, but rather, she felt it was her duty to document the story for those who were lost.  When asked about the term "survivor guilt", she said there is not survivor guilt, it is "survivor pain". 

But the thing that resonated so strongly with me, something I am always trying to explain, was her response when asked how does she then go on with this survivor pain.  She was a very sweet and eloquant woman, but when they asked her this, she became almost a little exasperated, and said..."You just go on...it is just pain...and you just go on with it."  I loved it.  Such a simple statement, so true.  She actually went further in her frustration of trying to explain it, by saying, "Just like if your knees hurt.  Do you stop walking?  No.  You just keep walking."

I remember that a long time ago, I saw an interview with senator Edwards' wife, fairly far along into her struggle with breast cancer, and after her husband's expose' in the media, with which her personal life had fallen apart as well.  The person interviewing her, (I honestly can't remember who it was), did something I had seen interviewers do before, (Barbara Walters with John Wayne), asked her point blank how she was able to get up each day and face life knowing that her situation was terminal and at that point fairly short.  I couldn't believe they asked her that, and apparently neither could she as it was the only point in the interview that she also looked fairly annoyed and exaasperted. 

But I remember her reply, almost word for word.  She simply looked at them, and said, "You just do it.  What other option is there?  Should I lay down in the street and let a truck run over me?  You just do it, you go on."

So I am thinking about these things, and the term survivor, and how so many people are survivors.  And I am thinking of how I and so many people try to explain or give analogies of how you live life day by day when there are what seem like insurmountable challenges, or such extreme sadness.  And I guess that when all else fails, the simple fact is that life prevails over all else.  This precious life, this time on earth, where we are joined in our hearts with others on our journey.

 We keep going. 

Some days, we will be happy just to get through, and we may feel overwhelmed by the sadness or lose our strength and hope, but if we keep an open heart and mind, we will awake again, to stronger days, and then happier days.  We will figure out that pain and sadness does not preclude life and joy, that it can exist side by side when we need it to.

And when we become strong enough to do this, the life and joy we continue to embrace, is perhaps more beautiful and held more closely to our hearts, than we might have realized before we became survivors.