reverberations...

Tsunami

Two days ago, in East Texas, I had a "chance conversation" with a woman I had only just met. In the conversation, I learned that she was preparing to travel to Switzerland to attend the funeral of a close friend of hers. I was completely shocked to discover that this friend of hers was also a friend of mine that I had lost contact with a number of years ago. This mutual friend, Carole Streuli, had been missing since the December 26 Tsunami disaster shook the world.

(AOL News, January 2005)
“Two weeks on, the Earth is still vibrating from the massive
undersea earthquake off Indonesia, Australian researchers said
Sunday...the reverberations were similar to the ringing of a bell...”

Poet Luci Shaw writes on 1/14/05:

Two weeks on, and the planet is still
droning like struck metal. The low coastlines
shiver. The next wave threatens
to wipe them away like dust on a shelf.
On a flight the laptops deploy all around me,
played by virtuosos, but not
a single musical note. Birds do better;
water dripping in a bucket after rain;
crystal clinked with a spoon to get
our attention. The drumming
of short-term thunder.

But nothing chimes like the great gong
at the heart of the globe. Circling out,
the ripples trouble the waters within us,
each of us waits for the chiming of the next bell,
the tectonic tremors of a subterranean giant
shifting in his bed, heaving his great metallic bulk
until the oceans lift and hurl themselves abroad in
green speeding mountains.

The remains of Carole Streuli's body have only recently been discovered and identified. Again... reverberations. Her grieving, weary parents will finally be able to bury their daughter. Carole's brother, who himself barely survived the Tsunami by clinging, broken-bodied, to a tree, will finally come to another level of acceptance, and bury his sister. And many others, family and friends of Carole Streuli, will feel the effects of the Tsunami again.

Reverberations. I felt those effects as I sat across the table in that "chance conversation." Until that moment, I had only grieved indirectly for victims of the Tsunami. Like most of us, I had watched from afar, the horrific recounts of the disaster that day. The reverberations of that ringing bell of unimaginable proportions had not touched me on a personal level...until two days ago.

Now, I also grieve with a depth I have not known. Over 176,000 people are confirmed dead since the Tsunami. That number continues to grow. Along with uncountable others, Carole Streuli's life is still reverberating in hearts around the world.

Yet another reminder...