The final words Rosie Forkan’s mother said to her were ‘I love you’. Eight-year-old Rosie then watched, helplessly, as her mum disappeared under the water, tragically losing her life alongside her husband in one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.
Rosie’s parents were among the 230,000 people from 14 countries who died in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami 20 years ago, when a massive earthquake jolted the seafloor upwards, triggering a series of colossal waves in the Indian Ocean.
It is only thanks to her mum Sandra’s courageous efforts to get her to safety that Rosie, now 28, is alive to tell their story. In fact, it is nothing short of a miracle, given Rosie’s age at the time and the ferocity of the 16ft waves.
Speaking for the first time, Rosie says: ‘I wouldn’t have made it had my mum not got me out of the guest house room we were sleeping in before it filled with water.
‘She put her hand under my chin, raising my head above the water line in a lifeguard hold, so I could keep breathing. Once we were out, the current was dragging us so forcefully, she couldn’t hold onto me any longer. I heard her say ‘I love you’, then she slipped under the water. I shouted ‘Mum!’, but she never came back up.’
It’s all the more devastating because little Rosie had just witnessed her brother Matt, 13, and father Kevin, 54, vanishing into the merciless waters, having been pulled by the force of a wave from the bedroom of the bungalow in Sri Lanka they were sharing.
Her other brothers, Rob, 17, and Paul, 15, had been sleeping in an adjacent room and Rosie had no idea where they were; nor if they were alive or dead.
Now separated from her mother in the sea swell, the force of the current pushed Rosie into the path of a tree. Her hair became caught on one of the branches and she was submerged below the waterline ‘for what felt like ages’.
The whole family pictured on a previous trip. The Forkan family had been travelling around Asia for around four years
The aftermath of the tsunami outside the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo. The Forkan siblings hitchhiked 92 miles to the city to seek help from the British Embassy
Somehow she managed to free herself and swim what she thinks was a distance of several metres through raging waters to a house with bars on its window. She used these to pull herself up on to the window ledge, then clambered on to the roof and out of the path of the deadly deluge.
‘I felt so scared and alone and remember shouting ‘Mum! Dad! Matt! Paul! Rob!’ But it was eerily silent. No one answered,’ she recalls. ‘I spotted a woman holding a baby on the roof of another building who was calling something out to me, but not in English, so I couldn’t understand her.’
The Forkan family had all been asleep, after spending Christmas Day surfing and body boarding on the beach, when the tsunami struck Weligama on Sri Lanka’s southern coast at around 8am.
They had been travelling around Asia for four years, since Kevin, an entrepreneur with a bohemian streak, and Sandra, 40, who shared her husband’s ‘live, don’t just exist’ attitude, sold their home in Croydon, south London and took the four youngest of their six children out of school.
They had been in Weligama for a week, travelling there from India for Christmas on a whim after Kevin read about it in his Lonely Planet guide. Nothing could have prepared them for the devastation that was to come.
The doors of their beachside bedrooms, around 90 miles from the capital Colombo, were ripped off by the waves, leaving them at the mercy of the elements.
‘My dad was the first to notice water in the room and shouted at us all to wake up,’ says Rosie. ‘Then, I don’t know how long afterwards, the big wave hit, smashing the windows and breaking down the door.
‘The room quickly filled with water so we couldn’t stand, our suitcases floating around in it, and suddenly Matt was washed out. Then my dad went too. That was the last I saw of him.’
From her vantage point on the roof, in the terrible aftermath, Rosie could eventually see the water receding and, sensing it was safe to do so, climbed back down.
She was spotted by a surfer who carried her to the top floor of a nearby hotel, out of harm’s way.
She sat there sobbing for several hours, surrounded by strangers, when someone said: ‘We think your brothers are downstairs.’
‘I was bleeding from cuts on my back, feet, arms and legs, but I ran downstairs and there they were: Rob, Paul and Matt,’ says Rosie, smiling at the memory.
‘I’ll never forget that moment, it was honestly the happiest of my life. I threw myself at them and we had a group hug.’
Rob and Paul had managed to swim through the swirling foam, Rob drawing on his lifeguard training skills. They had spotted Matt clinging to a coconut tree. Rob led the younger ones to a temple, where other survivors were holed up, and then went in desperate search of their parents.
Rosie, pictured in 2018, still struggles with flashbacks
Their older sisters, Marie, 21, and Jo, 19, were back home in Hampshire and, with phone lines down, had no way of contacting them.
Rob sensed that his parents would want him to get everyone home in case disaster struck again, so they hitch-hiked the 92 miles to Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city, to seek help from the British Embassy.
The journey took a gruelling 36 hours; in their pyjamas, without shoes, money or passports, the children relied on the kindness of strangers for lifts and water, walking long distances between rides on their bare and bloodied feet.
As well as their cuts and bruises, they were worried about Matt’s asthma. Without his inhalers, which had been washed away with the rest of the family’s belongings, he was at risk of a serious attack.
Rosie recalls: ‘People around us were worried about another wave coming. I was terrified every time I heard a noise, thinking we were about to be engulfed again. There were bodies on the ground and it was only then I realised that people were dead.’
Heartbreakingly, at one point on their journey, the children saw a woman on a bus who they mistook for their mother. The older boys ran after it, waving at the driver to stop.
‘It wasn’t her,’ says Rosie, the disappointment still etched on her face. ‘In fact, when we got close, she didn’t look like our mum at all.’ Once in Colombo, they were able to call their sister Marie, who was beside herself with worry, not knowing if any of her family had survived.
From there, the children boarded a flight home. Rosie recalls landing at Heathrow Airport on December 29, dressed in clean clothes provided by the embassy – but still without any shoes.
They may have left the hell wrought by the tsunami behind but, in many ways, the nightmare was only just beginning for the Forkan orphans.
The siblings were taken to Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, where their wounds were properly cleaned and dressed. A gash on Rosie’s arm had become infected and she needed antibiotics to clear it up.
With no family home to return to, Marie made room for them in her three-bedroom house in Farnborough, Hampshire, which she shared with her partner. There, the days passed in a blur as they awaited news of their parents’ fate.
They were supported by the generosity of the local community, who dubbed them the ‘tsunami kids’ and raised money to buy essentials and later build an extension on Marie’s home to accommodate them.
Rosie and her brothers started school in early February. At the end of their first day, Marie had to sit them down to deliver the devastating news that both their parents’ bodies had been found and identified.
‘I don’t remember exactly what she said, but I vividly recall the horrible feeling; I feel emotional just thinking about it,’ says Rosie. ‘I’d had hope up until then, praying every night that they would walk through the door.’
To keep the siblings together and ensure they didn’t end up in care, Marie adopted Rosie, Matt and Paul; Rob had by then turned 18. Marie, now a 41-year-old lawyer with three children of her own, ensured Rosie’s needs were met. She attended parents’ meetings and nativity plays, and nursed her younger sister when she was sick.
Rosie’s parents were among the 230,000 people from 14 countries who died in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami 20 years ago
A massive earthquake jolted the sea floor upwards, triggering a series of colossal waves in the Indian Ocean
But there was no protecting Rosie, who on top of grief felt a crushing survivor’s guilt, from the devastation of losing her parents in the most traumatic of circumstances. ‘I believed it was my fault my mother had died,’ she says. ‘If she hadn’t been trying to save me, she might have lived.
‘I remember thinking, and even saying, that my siblings would have been better off if Mum had survived instead of me.
‘They reassured me that, if anyone had to go, they’d have wanted it to be them, but it’s only in recent years with the help of therapy that I’ve been able to accept I wasn’t to blame.’ The events of that terrible day have certainly cast a shadow over Rosie’s life.
‘I really struggled to sleep, because of the flashbacks and nightmares, but didn’t want to wake my siblings,’ she says. ‘I tried speaking about it at first but then I saw how much it was upsetting them and I didn’t want to add to their burden, so I just kept it in.’
Aged 18 she began travelling, a passion inherited from her parents. One of her early trips, in 2015, was back to the scene of the tragedy in Sri Lanka. It was a journey which, although harrowing, helped her to make sense of what had happened that day.
‘It was hard going back to the last place I saw my parents,’ she says. ‘But I felt invincible when I travelled, like I had a new lease of life, and it was comfortingly familiar because I’d spent my early years going to new places with my parents.’
When the pandemic struck in 2020, the nightmares and flashbacks which had plagued her for 16 years became overwhelming.
Rosie spent several months in a psychiatric hospital where she was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), borderline personality disorder – a chronic condition which can causes mood instability, difficulty with relationships and self-harm – and attention deficit disorder (ADD).
She was prescribed mood-stabilising and anti-anxiety drugs as well as ADHD medication and referred for therapy, which has been ongoing since.
‘I remember having some counselling soon after my parents died, but I think I was too young to engage with it properly,’ says Rosie. ‘This time I’ve found it really useful in helping me regulate my emotions, have better relationships and manage any suicidal thoughts.’
A guitarist and singer, Rosie plays music in pubs and other venues, including a song, Legacy, which she wrote in memory of her parents, the proceeds of which went to supporting children in Sri Lanka suffering from food shortages.
‘It has been incredibly sad growing up without our parents,’ says Rosie. ‘But my siblings and I are all conscious of how fortunate we are to have had so much support, as well as each other.
‘There were a lot of people left much worse off than us.’
As the 20th anniversary of that terrible day approached, Rosie was preparing to spend Christmas with Marie in Toronto. The sisters planned to go sightseeing and reminisce about their parents.
‘My older siblings obviously have more memories than me, because they got more time with Mum and Dad,’ says Rosie. ‘I enjoy talking to them about our parents and hearing stories about how free-spirited they were.’
Her hope is that, one day, the happy, fleeting memories she has of her childhood will help to quiet the haunting scenes she can never forget.