A woman who survived a tsunami has opened up about its aftermath 20 years later.

We will never forget the Boxing Day tsunami, which claimed the lives of over 227,000 people on December 26, 2004.

Sharon Howard described it as an event that not only wounded her, but also resulted in the deaths of her two boys and fiancé.

She was on vacation in Thailand at the time of the hit, enjoying her time at the Khao Lak beach resort.

The family had no idea that 100-foot waves and an earthquake in the Indian Ocean would cause a devastation 23,000 times more powerful than Japan’s Hiroshima nuclear bomb.
David Page, 44, Mason, 8, and Taylor, 6, all died as a result of the accident.

Thailand was only one of several countries hit by the waves, which also included Indonesia, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

Sharon, 57, returned to her former hotel today to lay flowers in memory of the terrible accident.

According to The Sun, she stated, “I was dreading going back to Thailand, absolutely dreading it, but it was something I had to do for myself.”

“My family doesn’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’d regret not going.

She expressed that she feels more emotional now than she did when the incident occurred, describing it as if a part of her brain had shut off for years.
She explained that she has thought about her loved ones “every day for the last 20 years,” and that “the boys are always around me; they are in my heart.”

“You learn to live without them but never forget. You never heal.”I still see their pals and what they’re doing, and it makes me wonder what my guys would have done—if they’d had children—and what they would look like. But I will never know.

While many people died on the beaches when the waves crashed, Sharon was in her ground-floor hotel room with David, Mason was on a sun lounger outside, and Taylor was in the resort’s children’s club.

Sharon reported hearing a ‘loud and violent noise’ and attempted to open the door, but David advised her to lock it as ‘the water will fall down’.
Instead, the water ‘crashed through the patio door and threw us into the corner by the weight of it,’ resulting in head injuries.

Before falling out, she told her husband that she loved him. Upon her awakening, she found David dead, submerged in the sea before her.

She made an effort to find her boys.

“I knew I had to go and look for the boys.”

Unfortunately, the boys perished on impact.

On the other hand, Ian Walsh, an Australian vacationer, finally saved Sharon when he hung a beach towel from a higher level and pulled her up.

After the incident, it took three months for Taylor’s body to return to the UK, while it took months to find David and Mason’s remains.

After returning for 15 years to leave flowers at the new hotel, which was built after the first hotel was wrecked by the waves, she expressed her hope that there would be an official memorial service today.

However, when she phoned the British Embassy in Thailand, she received no response.

Despite her expectations of a day of celebration, the day robbed her of everything.

This is because David proposed to her on Christmas Day, the day before he died.

She said, “The day David and I got engaged was one of the best moments of my life.

I had been single for a while.

“The father of Mason and Taylor married me, but he left me six months pregnant.

“I had been living on my own, so it was comforting to believe I had a family again.

“I was eagerly anticipating the future, only to have it cruelly snatched away.”