Reflection

No matter how much we try to forget it,

this week it is three years since the February 22 earthquakes that changed everything.

The weather reminds us, the flowers in the gardens

and the rhythm of the school year beginning,

in many little ways we can't help but think back to three years ago.

This is the spot where I was driving past that day,

I watched the tower rock back and forwards and prayed it wouldn't fall on us.

I watched the tiles fall off the roof, I felt like I was in that TV program,

destroyed in seconds.

The fence still stand around that church today, three years on,

and the repairs have not yet begun.

I sewed a lot of quilts in the last three years,

I sew all my feelings and fears, my hopes and prayers into quilts.

It's hard to move on, and impossible to forget while there are so many reminders

every where we look of what happened that day and has continued

to happen since.

I've photographed quilts on a lot of what we call "the fences of doom".

These fences are still around these homes,

and they are neither being repaired or demolished yet.

This quilt we hung on the stadium to photograph.

The stadium is still waiting for a decision about what will happen to it.

I'm actually glad I took all these pictures.

I didn't realise how once all the buildings were gone,

it would become impossible to imagine how it was.

These buildings are gone, and the land still lies vacant while

the powers argue about what will happen.

All the buildings in this photo are gone.

These fences are gone, but the land is empty now.

No one has started building here.

This building is gone.

And all of these.

The fences are still around this church, while it waits for decisions.

Grief is a process, healing is a process.

No matter how much we wish, we cannot speed it up.

This week the grief hangs like a rock around our necks,

anchoring us in a moment of time to what happened that day.

And then the anniversary will pass and we will carry on,

working towards our future.