'Wave' memoir details London economist's loss of husband and two sons in tsunami

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London economist Sonali Deraniyagala poses in this undated handout photo. Deraniyagala's new memoir "Wave" is about losing her husband, her two young sons, and her parents in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Random House, Ann Billingsley

TORONTO - London economist Sonali Deraniyagala didn't intend on penning a book about the cataclysmic day she lost her husband, her two young sons, and her parents in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that swept over them in her native Sri Lanka.

The heartwrenching and frank memoir "Wave" that's now on shelves actually started out as a personal writing project to finally access haunting memories she feared so greatly, she believed she might "drop dead" if they entered her mind, she says.

"That was my instant defence, from the next morning after it happened. I thought, 'I don't want to remember anything about my life,'" Deraniyagala recalled during a stop in Toronto this week, echoing thoughts that are also in the book.

"Everything about my life I didn't want to remember. I couldn't come outside because I didn't want to see a blade of grass, because that's where my kids would have walked. I didn't want to see the sunshine or a ball or a car, because it reminds me of them.

"I had this huge, huge fear and so I ... continued writing, really, to allow memory in, slowly and gradually, because somehow it was a little more bearable if I was writing it, and ... I could control what memories I accessed by writing."

At a certain point the writing process became addictive. It was a survival tool allowing Deraniyagala to explore her feelings about an experience that was so bewildering, there was no reference point for her to even understand what had happened.

It also returned her family to her thoughts.

"I realized, 'Hey, I can actually feel very close to them and not feel only pain — or do feel pain and anguish or agony but it's a better quality,'" said Deraniyagala, who is on sabbatical from her teaching job at the University of London to be a visiting research scholar at Columbia University in New York.

"So it was a certainly a better quality of agony that I knew that comes with remembering, rather than the agony that comes with the effort it takes to shut out memory."

The much-lauded "Wave" (McClelland & Stewart) is Deraniyagala's first published book and traces her grieving process — from her feelings of shock, shame and anger, to her depression, denial and reckless behaviour.

The book begins on Dec. 26, 2004, when Deraniyagala and her family were vacationing away from their London home in Yala, a national park on the southeastern coast of Sri Lanka she'd been visiting since she was young.

Her husband, Steve, and sons Vikram (nearly eight) and Malli (five) saw the approaching wall of water from their hotel room and had to flee so quickly they didn't have time to knock on her parents' room next door.

Outside, they jumped into a stranger's jeep but as they drove away, the water caught up with them.

Deraniyagala writes with a raw honesty about what ensued.

In the subsequent months, she wanted to stay in a dream-like state, preferring not to come to terms with what had happened.

At her aunt's house in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, she sank into a deep depression, drank heavily, and wanted to kill herself.

When she found a Dutch family was renting out her parents' home in Colombo, she harassed them over a period of many late nights: banging on the gates, ringing the doorbell, and phoning them.

"It was not my finest hour," Deraniyagala said with a laugh.

Deraniyagala's family grew concerned about her mental stability but she liked the idea that she was seen as insane, partly because she felt like she might have been heading in that direction, and partly because she could hide behind that persona.

"You really feel you're spinning all the time, at that point.... Even when you sit down you feel the chairs falling through the floor. So this allowed me to kind of release that and go with that," she added.

"It was an important turning point, like, 'I'll take this into my own hands.'"

Eventually, Deraniyagala got the strength to go back to the wreckage of the Yala hotel and then the London home she lived in with Steve and the boys.

About two years after the disaster, she started writing about them, bit by bit.

At first she didn't show her passages to anyone but her therapist encouraged her to share them, so she did, with him and then her family members.

Then on the suggestion of friends, she emailed some passages to Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje, whom she'd met through a friend in New York.

He was "very positive" about it and asked to read more, said Deraniyagala.

Ondaatje then suggested she meet with his agent, and last April, Deraniyagala signed a book deal.

As "Wave" explains, Deraniyagala can still hear the voices of Steve and the boys in her head but it now gives her a "spark." She does have a new sadness, though, for she wants them as they would be now.

Living in New York, where she researches aspects of post-disaster economic recovery, helps.

"I go back a lot to the house and to London, but whether I can stay there yet, I don't know," she said. "So New York really suits me in that way. It gives me somewhere to retreat back to and kind of lick my wounds as it were, when London gets too much."

Deraniyagala said her family as well as Steve's have "been so pleased about the book," and she'd "love" to write more.

"Whether to be published, that I don't know, but I have to do some because it really kept me in a good, good place.... The writing place was very good."