“I’m so thankful for people all over the church, for their prayers and support,” said ELCA retired pastor Eardley Mendis, who lost his wife Tamara (shown in the photo below) 10 years ago in the tsunami.
MICHAEL D. WATSON
Ten years after the tsunami
I
meets monthly for worship in homes. “Tamara was very involved in
By Elizabeth Hunter
t’s been 10 years since an earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggering tsunami waves up to 100 feet and killing more than 230,000 people in 14 countries. ELCA retired pastor Eardley Mendis still remembers hearing on Dec. 26,
2004, the news that tsunami waves had struck the train carrying his wife, Tamara, and their daughter, Eranthie, along Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast. Eranthie was among the 150 people who survived. Tamara was among the nearly 1,500 who did not. “I feel a big vacuum in my life since 2004,” said Mendis, who was in
Chicago during their Sri Lanka visit. “Practically every day I think about it. T e people who died don’t die in my memories or my life. I’m so thankful for people all over the church, for their prayers and support. T e faith commu- nity made all the diff erence in my case.” Mendis now fi nds himself doing things his wife once did: cooking, work-
ing with refugees and gardening. He now shares his plant-fi lled apartment near the Lutheran School of T eology at Chicago with a seminarian from India and two refugees from Sri Lanka. He serves part time at First Lutheran Church in Logan Square, which has a ministry with homeless people in Chi- cago. And he’s still active in Purna Jiwan, an ELCA South Asian ministry that
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www.thelutheran.org
refugee work, so I continue to be involved with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and Refugee One,” he said. “She was a wonder- ful cook, and now I have learned to cook.” Chicken curry and dal are two of his specialties, and he enjoys cook- ing on Sundays for homeless people, many of whom worship at First. “Tamara had a real green thumb,”
Mendis said. “Well, I have killed most of those plants, but I try to keep some of them alive. … T ese are ways I cope, by doing the things she loved to do.” T is Dec. 26 the Mendis fam-
ily will hold a memorial service at Tamara’s childhood church in Sri Lanka, where she and Eardley were married nearly 39 years ago and where their three children were baptized. “I was 23 when my mom passed,”
said Eranthie Yeshwant, now mar- ried, working as a city planning
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