fathers anguish

These are the kinds of photos that I don't want to see, because they trigger the most primal sort of fear: losing your child. I've had a brief shadow of that kind of fear just losing sight of my daughter in the mall for ten seconds; these photos are the face of that fear naked and revealed in all its power. I need to see these photos, and so do you, and everyone else too. More than submerged landscapes or chaotic relief camps, these capture the human scale of the tragedy that unfolded on Sunday.


An Indian man cries as he holds the hand of his eight-year-old son, who was killed in a tsunami in Cuddalore, southern India, December 27, 2004.


An Acehnese man is comforted by his father as he weeps next to his daughter who is badly injured at the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, Aceh province, Indonesia's Sumatra island, Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2004.


A hospital worker ties a tag on the dead body of a child at the Karapitiya hospital some 125 kms south of Colombo.

The toll is now at 77,000 - and a third are children. While miracles did occur, they were few.