Since I started this site I’ve had a self-imposed policy of not using it as a personal soapbox and to stick to subjects solely related to the brief – WWII 1/35 scale Military Models. And I’ve stuck to that. Till now. In light of recent events I hope you’ll forgive me taking a brief foray away from models into the real world just to say a few things.
Today I’ve been reading the links on the NZHerald website about those who died. For those unfamiliar with it go HERE and there are links giving a little background on who the victims are and how they died ( a few at least, maybe 20-30 of what will probably ammount to 200-300 ). Some may call this morbid and they are probably right. But so often we hear of similar events overseas and they raise barely a ruffle as we don’t really relate. Now that it comes closer to hand we begin to. And when you look into the lives of those who lost theirs you begin to feel it even more accutely.
Not so much those who died in the CTV and PGC buildings - in earthquakes buildings collapse and people die and we say to ourselves ”that’s the nature of earthquakes” and feel safe that we don’t work in a highrise ( and my apologies here to those directly effected by the losses in those buildings, I by no means intend to trivialise their deaths besides those of others ). It’s the sporadic ones here and there that I feel most deeply. An elderly man in his garden picking strawberries hit by a large boulder, a bricklayer stopping off at a bakery to get his lunch buried under a collapsed facade, a father and husband out shopping and killed in his car, six people on a bus buried under rubble.
People just going about their day to day lives doing day to day things who but for a fluke of timing would still be here today. The difference in whether you got a red light or a green one, whether you decided to do one thing before another or the other way around, whether you turned left instead of right. And that’s what strikes me, that you can be doing nothing dangerous, nothing wrong, you can be in the safety of your own vege garden when nature strikes. It all brings you back to the reality that your life is only yours on loan and you have no say at all in when that loan gets called in.
I think at times like this we all need to be thankful for what we have, however much, however little, and I don’t mean possessions, possesssions are ethereal, fleeting, here one minute, gone the next. One woman died in Christchurch going back into a building to get her mobile phone after safely escaping. No phone is worth dying for and my heart goes out to her family because that is such an awful way to lose someone.
But be thankful for your own life, for the lives of those you love and who love you. Hug them, tell them. I was raised a “good Kiwi bloke”, men never hugged men. I still have problems with my wife’s family who are all huggy-kissy, but I loved the man who raised me and I never told him that, never did more than shake his hand. Then one night he died suddenly in his sleep, so I was never able to.
So I guess what I’m getting at here in a long winded way is that these people died with no warning, no inclination that it was coming, no chance to say goodbyes. If it’s my turn tomorrow, your turn tomorrow, make sure the people that you love know that while you can. Because even if it isn’t my turn or your turn, it may be theirs.
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