Commemoration and Community

[rumpelsnorcack]

The last two days have seen a roller coaster of emotions from me.  I seem to have forced myself through a micro version of everything I have felt over the past eighteen months - from fear to anger to happiness; defeat to fatigue to determination and everything in between.  I didn't cry (much) yesterday -- too numb? overwhelmed? I don't know, but it hit me today and it wasn't until I allowed myself to have that cry that I was able to turn my back on yesterday and try to concentrate on tomorrow.

There have been so many commemorations this week, from the obvious - the intense media interest replaying every graphic thing that happened and the large civic memorial in Hagley Park - to the small and intimate.  I don't have room to cover all of it so I will only talk about a few, the ones which touched me the most personally.  Because I had my son with me in the city for a hospital appointment which finished just as the civic memorial service was about to start I took him along.  It was nice, but I'm not sure I would have gone had I not been in the area already.  I spent the leadup to the anniversary expecting to go but on the day it felt quite formal and didn't allow for the release of emotions in the way something a bit more personal might have done.  The thing in the city that touched me the most, actually, was a woman at the hospital who was wearing the same tribute necklace I was.  Connecting on that personal level, sharing that moment, meant a lot more than the formal prayers.  Still, I think the ceremony was well done and I know my son found it quite useful in dealing with some of his unresolved emotions.

However, the smaller things seemed to say a lot more to me personally.  I walked out my driveway early yesterday morning with a handful of flowers, expecting to place them in a road cone.  I had expected that there might be a few decorated but what I saw made me sniffle a little.  It was difficult to find a cone that didn't already have a tribute in it -- the only one available was down our street a little way and set in from the road.  All the rest were already adorned.  More than anything, the placing of those flowers shouted 'community' to me --  those who live here embraced the idea to make all our lives a little brighter, and to remember all we have lost, in this one really lovely way.  From single flowers in some cones to elaborate works of floral art in others, everyone had added their own unique 'voice' to the event.  Those cones are, for the most part, still filled with flowers now and they all tell me every time I see one, that we are still all in this together, each giving of ourselves in our own way and with the whole becoming something beautiful and larger than ourselves.  Those floral tributes are out there right through the city; they are more sparse on the western side perhaps but you can still find them leaping out at you in the oddest places.  Every time I see one I smile.  On the bleakest of days those flowers were a little ray of sunshine.  They clearly still mean something to people too; it was very windy today and one near here was blown over and its flowers fell out but less than half an hour later when I passed it again it was upright once more and its flowers were back in place.

 
Some of the cones down our street - you can see the one we decorated far in the background.


   Even the saddest of road cones was decorated with flowers.   

There were others that I didn't get to, but that touched me when I read about them.  Where the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church used to sit there is an installations of 185 chairs.  They represent the 185 people who died and are quite heartbreaking in their simplicity.  The ones that made my breath catch were a baby's carseat and a highchair - remembering how young some of those people were is terrible.  Hearing the names read out at the memorial service was very illuminating.  You hear the number 185 and you think, gosh that's a lot, but it doesn't mean anything much more than that.  But when you hear them read out in a long, sad 13 minutes or see them represented in such a stark way as this it really brings home just how many people that is.  In a similar vein is the 185 Hearts -- I didn't know any of these people personally and yet thinking about what happened to them still upsets me.  I often think about their families and friends and what they have gone through this year - not just dealing with the quakes and hardships like all the rest of us, but the terrible pain of losing someone they loved as well - so I know if I ever come across any of those stones I will pause and reflect.

I finished my day off with a very lovely meeting with a number of people from twitter.  After a day which veered from sadness to weariness it was lovely to relax, have fun and chat with a community which I both know inside out and not at all.  Some of those people I know very well, some not at all and yet I enjoyed spending time with all of them.  It was the perfect low key, casual ending to the day and I am thankful for whoever decided to arrange it.

One thing I have seen expressed over and over again today is that this is 'Canterbury's New Year' - that from today it's a time to start afresh, look ahead and regenerate.  I think that's possibly the biggest blessing to come out of yesterday - that as a community we are getting ready to stop looking back and that we should focus more on what the future holds for us rather than what the past has ripped away.  There will always be those moments, of course, but it's encouraging to see motivation to try and move past what has happened.  Here's hoping we can take our leaders with us on that ride, and really get the ball rolling this year :D