If words were tears these words would be as salty and as wet as the ocean. No survivors have been found since Wednesday. There are still about two hundred people missing. The death toll keeps rising.
The bodies that have been recovered, and those yet to be found, they were just like us; three days ago they ate breakfast and had plans for the weekend. They are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties, uncles, friends, sons and daughters. Yesterday the coroner assured us that the bodies were being looked after. "I am a mum and a grandma" she said. "There is always someone with them." I've done a lot of crying but at that I sobbed. Those bodies belong with their loved ones. There are hundreds and hundreds of people desperate in their grief to see the ones they have lost. To touch a hand, to hold the corner of a shirt. Who can imagine the horror of the damage that they will see? I can't. Crushed limbs, faces unrecognisable. But something, hopefully something they can touch, talk to. This is what the mourners at Pike River were so cruelly deprived of.
And the rest of us, even those of us removed by distance and with our loved ones safe, even we need something to see, something real to help us comprehend the horror. I feel useless up here in Auckland. If I could jump on a plane and get down there I would. I would sweep up the broken glass in my sister's house. Slowly work with her to pick up and clean up the chaos. I'd put on an orange jacket and walk into the war zone that is Christchurch's CBD. I'd pick up bricks, I'd comb through rubble. I would work all night and through the day to find your mother, your baby. I would sit next to the body of your cousin, sing to her, touch her. These are all things that we ordinary people are not needed to do. Yet this is what deep down we long to do, all of us.
New Zealand is broken. We have lost the heart of one of our most beautiful cities. Per capita our loss of life is greater than the losses of 9/11. We are all hurting.
Are prayers and best wishes futile? No. Distance is no hindrance to those. We can sing too. We can let a song rise in our hearts, a lament that is waiting to be sung. As we sing it together, it becomes our desperate prayer.
I've linked it before, but this version of our national anthem was made for now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
tears.
ReplyDeleteYes, we can pray and sing! and for me it seems so weird that we get to carry on as usual, of course thinking about Christchurch and praying but for the most part we just carry on with our lives because we can't just stop... or can we?
ReplyDelete