Like millions of people around the world I have watched in shock and horror the reports of the tsunami disaster in South-East Asia.

Every day we hear of more villages wiped off the face of the earth and more dead bodies found. As well, the count of the missing, most of who will never be found, continues to mount.

Not surprisingly, it is the faces of the children that stay with us; little ones who have lost brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers or entire families. Every time I see one of them I wonder what their life will be like. I watched a show the other night where they showed children in a makeshift refugee camp. One child had indeed lost her entire family, in fact her whole village was gone. Where will she go? Who will take care of her if or when she leaves the camp? How will she cope with her loss once she realizes the enormity of it ?

Perhaps as children it will be easier for them to deal with this disaster; certainly children are very resilient and have an amazing capacity to adapt. But how do you adapt to the fact that your entire life has been swept away ?

Aid agencies, governments and individuals from all over the world have rushed to help the victims of the tsunami disaster.

Now a higher force needs to come to their assistance.

I had a couple of teachers years ago, names of Mr. Halliwell and Mr. Kendricks. Halliwell was my gym teacher and Kendricks taught math.

Mr. Halliwell was a little guy with black hair and glasses, looked kind of geeky. I remember one gym class when we had to climb the rope. It looked pretty easy until you actually tried it and then about halfway up you realized you might not make it and now you had a choice. You could keep trying but your hands might get really sweaty and you’d lose your grip and fall or you’d make it almost to the top and have a heart attack and fall; either way you were dead. Or you could just give up and climb back down and face your friends’ ridicule.

After several of us had tried without success Mr. Halliwell proceeded to show us how it was done. He jumped on the rope and climbed it right to the top using just his hands. It was amazing. I mean here was this little guy who didn’t look like he could climb a ladder, much less a rope, going up and down that thing like a monkey. Eventually he told us he’d done this in the army or something, or maybe it wasn’t the army, maybe he just came to the gym in the middle of the night when the rest of us were asleep and climbed that damn rope.

Now Mr. Kendricks wasn’t fit but he was big, really big, like a refrigerator (or so it seemed to me at the tender age of 12). He had a deep booming voice too. Nice guy until you made him mad and then you would realize you’d made a terrible mistake. One time this one kid really ticked him off because he hadn’t done his homework for like the 3rd time in a row. I can't remember if Mr. Kendricks actually hit him (remember these were the days when if a teacher smacked you and you went home and told your parents they didn’t sue they just smacked you too) but he sure scared the hell out of him. Us too.

Anyway, the really neat thing about these two guys was the relationship they had. Mr. Halliwell was a Kiwi and Mr. Kendricks was an Aussie so they were constantly ribbing each other, pretending they couldn’t stand to be in the same room together. In actual fact they were great friends and they both had guitars and could sing like nobody’s business. I remember a couple of school trips they got out their guitars and sang and played and they were fantastic together.

Those guys were cool.

My mother died in April of 1995. She had heart problems for some time so her death was not unexpected, in fact in a way it was a small blessing. No longer would she be hospitalized every few months so doctors could spend weeks trying to get rid of all the fluid that had accumulated in her lungs because her heart wasn’t strong enough to do it. No longer would my father spend days on end walking hospital corridors wondering if she would live through this latest crisis. And no longer would I be called in the middle of the night to hear the dreaded words “you’d better come home, your mother isn’t going to make it this time.”

A few weeks later one of my maternal uncles died. Although I didn’t attend that funeral my father did, and it was tough on him. Here he was attending another funeral not even a month after burying his wife. On his way home (he had a 6-7 hour drive) he stopped at his sister’s place to spend the night and he gave me a call and asked me to drop by as he had some stuff for me. We had a drink and talked a bit and he said he’d like to move a little closer, get a place near his sister’s so he could visit her and our family, maybe spend more time with his grandson.

That was the last time I saw him; 2-3 weeks later he was found dead in his apartment.

I wasn’t just sad when my dad died, I was angry, furious to be exact.

Here I had lost my mother a little over a month ago and now my dead was dead too. This wasn’t fair. I mean my dad was my friend and we were going see each other more often and yeah, console each other about my mother’s death, share some memories and he died instead.

Anyway, here it is almost 10 years later and the best thing I can say about that awful time is that I finished growing up.

See, your parents have to love you, it’s their job. They’re there for you whenever you need advice or a place to go to when you need to get away from it all, call it a sanctuary if you will.

When they die though you’re on your own. You make the decisions, you take the risks and you take the falls. And when you do you fall there’s nobody there to pick you up but you.

So although I miss my parents their deaths forced me to grow up that last little bit.

I’m not sure I conveyed the message I wanted to in the above post so let me try again.

My parents weren’t just parents, they were friends. These people adopted me, raised me and helped mould me into the person I am today. As parents usually are, they were there for me when I needed them, and as kids often do, I turned to them in times of trouble; for help, for advice or just to hear them say things would get better.

I also mentioned sanctuary and I want to pursue that thought too. Home is a sanctuary. It’s the place you go to when you need to get away from it all or when things aren’t going well in your life. When you get older, get married, have kids, you may not go there as often as you used to, maybe you only get there at Christmas, Easter and other special occasions, but you know it’s still there waiting for you if you need it.

So when my parents died I lost my friends and I lost my sanctuary.

It felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach but I finished growing up.