Healing power of painting
The mother of a young soldier killed when a unimog plunged off a cliff has found peace by transferring her grief onto canvas.
Private Meredith Simms was 18-years-old when driver inexperience caused the fatal crash, near Blenheim, in the early afternoon on August 16, 2006.
His mother, Tima Simms, a former counsellor, began art classes in 2013 after recurring dreams showed a woman standing in front of a whiteboard with a set of paint brushes. She took it as a sign and started to paint.
Feelings of depression began to subside and her art helped her see colour for the first time in years.
Her paintings show the progression from darkness and sorrow to light and serenity, and will be on display next month in an exhibition at the Feilding and District Art Centre.
Simms said the initial shock in 2006 was not only of her only child’s sudden death, but that she never thought he would go before her.
It was a cold winter’s day in Marlborough when overloaded cargo in the back of the unimog shifted while navigating a sharp corner at 45 kilometres an hour, causing it to roll to the bottom of a 100-metre cliff.
Simms, a passenger, was found dead at the bottom of the ridge, clothes ripped and badly cut.
The driver was thrown from the vehicle.
He survived, but suffered a broken spine.
‘‘I had just arrived home and, as you do, rushing around getting the fire going and thinking: ‘He’ll be calling us any minute now’.’’
She turned on the television. A news report of her son’s crash was playing.
At the same time a man in army uniform knocked at the door.
‘‘He said: ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m sorry, ma’am’. I said: ‘‘Sorry for what?’. ‘I’m sorry about Private Meredith’, he replied.
‘‘I thought: ‘This only happens in the movies. Am I seeing a movie?’’
Drawing on her experience as a counsellor, Simms felt the black dog starting to take hold.
In a bid to cope with their grief, she and her husband moved to Feilding, from Upper Hutt, in 2010. They wanted to start fresh and make new memories, knowing their son would still be with them in spirit.
That’s when the dreams began.
‘‘Every time it happens, I’m standing there in front of a big whiteboard and it’s asking me to go and draw what my life is going to look like.’’
She took an art class, which helped transfer the recurring dreams onto the canvass.
The collection of work started three years ago, with a piece called ‘centre of attention’.
The set of work concludes with ‘the girl in blue’, a vibrant piece, rich with colour. Simms said it reflected the lifting of depression and seeing light for the first time in years.