Posted on 12/30/2004 7:00:24 AM PST by bd476
Mother and child reunited
Published on December 30, 2004
"The gods smiled on Suparat Silao, a 28-year-old mother who thought the waters had claimed her three-year-old boy in Phang Nga’s Takua Pa district. After three days of futile searching for Wathanyu (nicknamed Diew) she and her husband, Suthipong Pa-opat, resigned themselves to having lost Diew forever. The search by the despondent parents turned into a quest for their young son’s body.
Then some neighbours who had survived Sunday’s disaster told the young mother that they had seen her little boy being treated at Takual Pa Hospital. On hearing Diew was alive, a teary-eyed, delighted Suparat pronounced: “It’s a miracle!’’
She recalled that bright Sunday morning at around 10am, when her son was watching TV at home. She was on her way to the market, but hurried back home on hearing villagers shouting that giant waves were approaching the village.
She clasped Diew to her bosom and ran. She couldn’t outrun the tsunami, however. The roiling waters caught up with mother and son and devoured them both.
Diew was wrenched from her embrace and disappeared from sight. Her husband, Suthipong, explained later that he had been out fishing four miles offshore when a giant wave smashed into his boat and capsized it. He took five hours to swim back to the shore and find his wife.
For three days thereafter, the distraught mother would blame herself for her son’s loss, wishing that it were she who had died instead of him.
Then miraculously, Suparat was reunited with Diew again.
She dashed to his bed in the hospital and covered him with tearful kisses. From head to toe, the boy was peppered with insect and mosquito bites.
Diew told his mum he had been very scared when he looked back and saw giant waves chasing them as he was cowering in her arms. He said that later as he was clinging to branches in a mangrove forest he saw helicopters circling overhead, but that no one saw or helped him. Finally, a group of policemen in a longboat searching for bodies in the mangrove forest spotted him and took him to hospital.
The Suthipongs are among more than 2,000 families in Ban Nam Kem, Tambon Bangare, made homeless by the disaster. Suthipong said the family had no choice but to stay with his wife’s parents in Nong Khai.
Relating the miraculous rescue yesterday, Police Sergeant Chai Klinobchoei said he and seven other officials in a long-tail boat were searching for missing people in a village when they spotted a body stuck among the mangrove branches.
As the officials were removing the corpse, Chai noticed a young boy – who turned about to be Diew – moving his head in the tree tops.
After bringing him down, Diew looked frightened and asked for a soft drink and snacks, said Chai, adding that he gave the boy some clean water to drink and sent him to hospital."
I heard that this might be "only an emotion away"! : )
A little Paul Simon song memory first thing in the morning is good. :)
Oh great, thanks for the film. Just hope no one takes my kodachrome away.
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