The Enclusien has already told his story dozens and dozens of times. Still, after the chaos, his memories are confused. “The survival instinct? Honestly, everything goes very quickly. I took the stairs to take refuge wherever I could in the hotel, I entered a room and I was thrown by the water. I saw death.“
Luc stops his story and takes out the article from a Danish daily, soberly titled: “Thank you for being alive.” The gazette reports the rescue of the Belgian by two young Danes aged 17 and 23, Lucas and Mark Undal. The Danes were on the 3rd floor of a nearby hotel on the day of the disaster. “After the second tidal wave, we heard someone calling for help. We didn’t find him, but I saw a man hanging from a palm tree behind our hotel“, Mark said at the time.
The Dane throws himself into the water. He prepares to save Luc, who is seriously injured in the head, back and leg. “When I reached the palm tree, his eyes were rolled back. If it wasn’t me who saved him, someone else would have.“
Twenty years later, the Enclusian responds: “I don’t think so. This is why Lucas and Mark are my heroes. My wife and my son, who had stayed at the hotel, thought I was dead. It was thanks to my two saviors that I was able to find them and hold them in my arms.“
As the tsunami hit the Thai coast, it sowed death and chaos. Luc found himself 300 meters from his hotel, in the middle of collapsed buildings, walls and objects carried by the unimaginable force of the Ocean. “I don’t know how I clung to this palm tree anymore“, concedes Luc.
Youngest son of the Cousaert couple, Olivier frantically searches for his father after the passage of the immense wave. “He was searching through the bodies, it’s terrible to say“, insists Luc. He will find him alive, but very seriously injured. The Enclusien is then evacuated”possibly on a motorbike” he said before being operated on, in precarious conditions, by a Thai octogenarian. He was taken to Phuket where a Belgian doctor feared for his lower body. “My head felt better. My leg? It shouldn’t matter much but the medical staff manages to save her. Then, I was repatriated to Belgium and hospitalized in Ronse. My fever is going down and my strength is coming back little by little.“, remembers Luc.
The man is a miracle, one of those who have no after-effects other than a scar. “I have few memories of the critical moment and it’s probably for the best. I skipped this traumatic moment in my life. I’m lucky to still be here, 20 years later. Obviously I see the glass half full and I enjoy every moment. This is what allows me not to feel guilty for still being here when so many others have perished.“, confides our interlocutor.
The tsunami changed everything, not physically, but in the mind. “Before Thailand, I worked 13 to 14 hours a day, my head was on the handlebars. I never needed therapy after the disaster. When I came back to the store, I was in a wheelchair. I have often recounted my vision of December 26, 2004, but I have never watched the famous film (The Impossible) or entertained this memory. I have several good stars. There’s Lucas and Mark, obviously. But also all the people who looked after me. It was morally exhausting to feel weak, but I had the will to fight and walk again.“
Two decades have passed. Luc admits that since 2004, he has known “distinguish the essential from the futile, from the accessory. You have to enjoy the simple things. Because one day, in your life, simple things become essential. This is what this disaster taught me.“
We obviously leave him with the final word. “What was the title of the Danish newspaper article? Thanks for being alive? That’s it. Thank you for being alive. The rest is secondary.“
