World | Other World Stories
Family victim comes to Thailand
Carl Bergman of Stockholm and his family members attended a private memorial service on Thursday in Phuket, Thailand. Bergman's wife was killed in the tsunami but his son Hannes survived the killer waves and was rescued by a Thai princess.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 December 25, 2005
Phuket, Thailand: Gunlog Sanner Norling and her husband had never been to Thailand before, but they decided they couldn't spend this Christmas alone in Sweden so they accompanied their son-in-law and grandsons to the country where their own daughter perished in last year's tsunami.
The day after Christmas last year, Cecilia Bergman, 37, was sitting by a swimming pool at a Thai resort when the waves slammed into her and her 18-month-old son Hannes.
Miraculously, Hannes survived and was rescued by a Thai princess, who whisked him by helicopter to a hospital. Cecilia's husband, Carl Michael Bergman, was on a diving trip and returned safely to shore.
An older son Nils, now 4, was riding an elephant on higher ground away from the shore.
"Why couldn't they have stayed here?" Cecilia's mother said aloud, as she sat by a swimming pool at a Phuket resort that was untouched by the tsunami.
A week before her daughter's family left for Thailand last year, Norling recalls, she had a dream in which she saw Cecilia floating in water, dead.
When she got news of the tsunami at her home in Stockholm, she said she soon realised the dream was a moment of clairvoyance and that her daughter had died.
On Thursday, the family visited the Khao Lak resort area where Cecilia died and lay purple orchid bouquets in the sea in front of their beach-side bungalow.
"It was good to see Khao Lak because I was so angry that they had to go there, but then I saw that it was a wonderful place, and I said, 'OK Cecilia, I understand why you came here,'" Norling said.
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