Sharon Howard has returned to Thailand to mark the 20th anniversary of losing her six-year-old son Taylor, his eight-year-old brother Mason and fiancé, David Page, 44
A woman who got engaged on Christmas Day in 2004, saw her world fall apart less than 24 hours later as her new fiance and two young sons were swept away in the Boxing Day Tsunami.
Twenty years on, Sharon Howard has returned to Thailand to mark the anniversary of losing six-year-old son Taylor, his eight-year-old brother Mason and fiance, David Page, 44. She says she has thought about them every day for the last 20 years and needed to make the 6,000-mile journey from her home in Cornwall to the beach resort in Khao Lak.
The Boxing Day Tsnuami killed 227,000 people after huge 100ft high waves were triggered by a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean. The water devastated South East Asia wiping out towns and villages in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and the Maldives. It was the biggest natural disaster in history.
There were 151 Brits among the dead including Sharon’s three loved ones. She told the Sun about the morning the waves hit. The family had enjoyed breakfast together, before the youngest was taken to the hotel’s kids club by David, Sharon stayed in the ground floor hotel room, with young Mason laying on a sunbed feet away on a sunbed outside the room.
The water was suddenly in the room, Dave shouted at her to shut the patio door to stop in coming in, but seconds later the water burst through, knocking the adults to the back of the room. Sharon hit her head and passed out, when she came round Dave was dead, he died instantly when the wall of water hit him. Sharon scrambled out of her room, over debris and upturned furniture and began screaming for help. Her life was saved by Australian holidaymaker Ian Walsh, who dangled a beach towel from an upper level and hauled her up to safety.
Speaking to the Sun, Sharon said: “People shouted that the water was coming again. He grabbed some towels and helped me up to the next level. That saved me from being washed away. I just thought ‘I’ve got to get to the children’s club’. I managed to get down there but there was a man in there who said, ‘There’s no one in there’. He was also looking for his little boy.
“I walked, looking for my sons, all night. The next day, the man I saw in the children’s club came to find me and he said he had found Taylor’s body huddled with his little boy. Every night I go to bed and all I can think of is Taylor lying there, cold, all on his own and that thought terrifies me.” David and Mason were not found for months.
Speaking about her decision to return she added: “I am not the same person I was before. I lost my two babies who still needed me. I needed to mark the anniversary where it happened. My family don’t really understand but we all grieve differently and they prefer to leave it in the past and remember them as they were.
“But I knew I would regret it if I didn’t go. I feel more emotional now than I did when it happened. I think it was because it was like a part of my brain shut down for years. You learn to live without them but you never forget. You never heal. I see their friends around still and what they are doing and it makes me wonder what my boys would have been doing — if they’d have had children, what they would look like. But I’ll never know.”
