"Fran" wrote in
:

"Geodyne" wrote in message

The end of last year was pretty big to me - we lost 53 distant family
members in the tsunami. Hopefully the rest of this year will be
somewhat less dramatic.

That shocking news! I'm very sorry to hear that.

Thanks Fran. Fortunatley for me, most were very distant family - cousins
of my two SsIL by marriage. They are very upset, of course as are we
all.

It's probably a cold-hearted thing to say, but we're actually counting
out blessings because we had 5 immediate family members in Sri Lanka
that day - including H's brother and BIL's PIL. Some of them had been
in the village where most of the family were lost just a few days
before.

The other two near family members were SIL's sister and her husband, who
is a doctor and was in Sri Lanka for the first time. He immediately
volunteered his services after the tsunami hit and spent the rest of his
holiday going through affected areas, helping where he could. He said
that the level of devastation was total in many places.

Tara