Thursday, February 11, 2010

cath - gone but not forgotten

It was nine years ago at the end of last month that Cath was killed.
Funny things remind me of her. The Wellington Sevens Rugby tournament because I went the day after her funeral. The kids, because after we got married she was always asking when I was going to "pop a sprog", but she wasn't around when I finally did. Facebook, because she would have been right into that, but it didn't exist in her lifetime.
I see a person that looks like her. That is the silly thing I guess, they look like her nine years ago. She will always look like that now, never get older like me.
It is also weird to think nine years have passed. Now I have lived nine years longer than she has. It doesn't seem right or fair but that is the reality.
I can remember getting a cell phone call that she had been killed and it took awhile for me to get the message of what had happened. Then I heard it on the news but the names were not released and for twenty-four hours it felt like she was okay, maybe it was mistake and it wasn't her. I went off to Auckland for work but that night in my hotel room I saw the news and they showed her picture. There was no pretending, the cell phone call had been real, it was Cath. It was only twenty four hours but it seems looking back, much longer the waiting for the media to somehow make it true.
I think about her family these days and how everyday they have reminders that she is no longer with them. Then it is strange to think of the impact of her death and how so many many people have died in Haiti and the grief so many over there must be feeling.
Death is so arbitrary but so final.
Well Cath no matter how many years go by, you won't be forgotten and you'll be forever young as I get more wrinkles and I think you would tease me for that.

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5 Favourite Sights Seen

  • 1996 Watching tropical lightning turn night to day, outside a little wooden church in a small village in Sabah.
  • 2004 Flying down the Rainbow Valley at 8000ft in a cessna on a clear blue day.
  • 2003 Seeing and hearing Michael Schmacher rolling out of the pit garage in his Ferrari in Hungary.
  • 2009 Chancing upon 100 or more dolphins just off the Kaikoura Coast swimming around, jumping out of the water, doing somersaults and generally having fun.
  • 2006 Finding a pool at the bottom of a waterfall in the bush at Kaikoura that was full of playing baby seals.