Someone on one of the newsgroups I read posted a link that pointed to photos of those found dead after the tsunami. We received some distance photography on national television here, but these photos offer a glimpse of the rubble before they pulled all the bodies out. There is one picture, number 33 (of all numbers), that is a wide, long shot of a beach covered in broken wood and rubble. Intermingled with this are hundreds of bodies. When I think of death, I think of the few loved ones I have lost - not death on this scale. These people could have been those thousands I saw in the city at midnight on new years eve. But now they're faceless, discoloured (to put it nicely) people that I will never know except from photos that I suppose could be labelled gruesome, but to me it's not gruesome. It's just sad. It's sad to see a tent full of dead children who almost look like they're sleeping except for the tell tale tinge of cyanosis.
It makes me appreciate my life so much more. I feel overwhelmed that I get to live while so many people died. I will post the link to the photos but please don't feel obliged to look at them. Death is something personal to me, and indeed everyone and how you approach it is your choice. There is nothing wrong with never ever wanting to see a dead person, and there is also nothing wrong with looking at photos of the dead if only to understand. The images are not of the people who loved and had babies and husbands and wives. They are images of the people who used to live. That's the best way I can think about it.
The link. These are from a news agency, and you will recognise a lot of the first 31 photos, they're not graphic - but everything after that is. Don't spend too long there and remember that those left alive have to live with those images etched in their memories and we need to help them however we can.
On a side, and happier note, the guy in the first two photos survived, he is a beach waiter who comes from Ratchaburi province in Thailand and somehow made it out alive.
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