DAVE BRANTON

This one was different, It didn’t stop! It seemed to build and build and then everything fell. The monitors collapsed off the desks and one of my colleagues fled under hers as I headed for the doorway. It was the first time I had ever done anything apart from sit there and try to be cool. I was like, yeah, okay, now is the time to stand in the doorway. After that I needed to move, is my house a pile of rubble sort of thing? On my way home, I passed people streaming out of the city and I’ve never seen such terrified faces; just real fear. Hundreds of them. 

I knew Julia was okay and two of my boys, but the third, Oliver, was at preschool and for a moment I let myself think he could be under a heap of debris. That was silly, yeah, that was stupid. As a parent, that’s somewhere you shouldn’t–you can’t–go. You simply have to say, ‘Okay, Julia’s on her way to get him, there is nothing else I can do in that situation, he is probably fine.’ And he was.

After February our home was pretty bad, but then Japan came along shortly afterwards and demonstrated just how bad it can really get. To complain after seeing whole villages washed away would be churlish. So again, I was pretty optimistic. I’m optimistic still! I have my family, they are all still here. Our three little boys are happy boys, they go to school, they fight, they play, they break things, make a lot of noise, but they don’t wake up fearful in the night. The aftershocks come along and they don’t flinch. I’m grateful for that. If I was to wish for anything… I don’t know… I could wish for a million dollars I suppose, or the ability to play guitar like that guy who sold his soul at the crossroads, what’s his name, Robert Johnson, but it wouldn’t be right. I could wish away all the unhappy things that have happened to me, to my family, but I don’t think that would be right either. They are now part of who we are. The tragedies we have lived through, as much as the triumphs that we experience, they all form a part of what or who we are. So yeah, despite the cracks in my house, I don’t feel I have anything to wish for. I still feel like I have everything I could possibly want, I do. And we will find somewhere else. Actually, I guess there is one wish, that we get a decent deal from the insurance company, it would be good for the family to have a nice house again, if not here, then somewhere.