The Day That Changed My Life Page #4

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would've been if the building was still up.

And when I-you just looked at the rubble there and

the smoke pouring out of it, I really thought...

Man, I just knew she was in there, and

I knew she wasn't coming out, at that point.

Matt and I, we went off. The police took our

names and all the details, and so I went home.

And that was really hard cos, um,

you know, there was washing all folded up

and it's just like she shot

down to the shops or something.

By the Thursday, it was, uh, stated that all work

on the CTV site would now be recovery and not rescue,

and there were no survivors left.

It had to be managed as if it was a-

a crime site.

Tony and I just had this unspoken...

understanding that we'd go there,

because in Maori culture,

it's all about getting the ones that have

deceased back to their families for closure.

For the first three or four days,

I kept a tally of how many

bodies we recovered.

After a certain number,

I stopped-I stopped counting.

Am I glad I did it? Yeah.

Does it have a lot of...

impact on me? Yeah.

Was there a lot of trauma?

Yes.

Would I do it again?

Yeah.

From the scans, they knew

I had a fractured pelvis.

I put on 25kg of fluid, which was-

is a result of a crush injury.

Because I was on dialysis

and had kidney failure,

they couldn't give me painkillers.

I was just on basics.

The pain was always 10 out of 10,

and I was on amputation watch

for my legs.

I was in hospital for

three and a half months,...

learning to walk again. Yeah.

I wanted to get out of hospital, you know. I wanted

to run again, and maybe one day I will. I don't know.

But, um, I was determined

to get out.

I got an incredible opportunity following the

earthquake to write the memoriam tribute to the victims.

There are 185 victims, and I was

given the chance to call the family members

and pull the photographs

from all over the world,

and that gave me closure.

I can still name where some

people were, where they died.

I know the names of the people

who died in City Mall.

I know the names of the people who died in PGC, the

people who died on the hills, and I won't forget that.

Um, and that was an experience that

you can't not change from.

Every day, they were announcing the names of

people that they had found in the building,

and every day, we were waiting

for Susan's name to be announced,

cos I was starting to get worried

that we may end up never finding her

and always wondering

what had happened.

You know, I had days just lying on the floor at

home in the foetal position, howling my eyes out,

sort of two or three days on end

sometimes, um, but it actually helped.

The good news was that

she was identified.

It took five weeks, um,

through dental records.

So we were able to have a funeral, and it was an

amazing celebration of her life. It was really...

Mm.

All of us are far better people

for having had Susan in our lives

than we would have been with

never ever having met her.

Susan has actually

got us through this.

Her spirit-Um, every now and again,

you can hear her saying,

'Don't worry about this. Get going, '

you know, 'you'll be all right. '

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