The strands of grief
February 22, 2011, was a normal day at work for Christchurch tattoo artist Matthew McEachen, but just before 1pm he was killed by falling masonry in the magnitude-6.3 earthquake. Vicki Anderson reports in part two of a three-part series.
February 9, 1986
Five weeks premature, Matthew Stuart McEachen is born in Christchurch, weighing just three pounds. He will always be Matthew to his mum and dad, Matti to his friends.
‘‘When he was born he was so tiny, it frightened Bruce and I,’’ recalls Jeanette McEachen as we sit in her garden on a hot Saturday morning.
‘‘We had to fight to have a little prem baby that survived,’’ she says. ‘‘There was just 20 months between Matthew and [his sister] Sarah. They were always best friends. Sarah was a prem baby too, only one pound.’’
Bruce McEachen leans back in his chair and chuckles. ‘‘He was a lovely wee kid, never any trouble or bother.
‘‘Matthew was the ideal big brother because any time they went anywhere, he always made sure Sarah went down the slide first to see if it was safe, that was a family joke.’’
When Matthew was 7, the family moved to Dunedin. ‘‘They went to St Leonard’s primary school, it had 35 pupils . . . half the kids at the school their parents were lecturers at the university, it was a great environment,’’ says Bruce.
Matthew and Sarah were teenagers when the family moved back to Christchurch. ‘‘It created an amount of stress separating them from their friends. In hindsight it was probably a good thing as it made Matthew and Sarah a lot closer. They both went to Papanui High School and had lunch together every day.’’
Bruce says that Matthew was playing with drawing ‘‘almost right from the day he was born’’.
‘‘He just had that bent towards making things and drawing things.’’
September 4, 2010
A 7.1 earthquake strikes Christchurch at 4.35am.
‘‘Matti lost his place and everything he had in that first earthquake,’’ says Sarah. ‘‘He rocked up to my house and lived on my couch for a bit. A girl he knew made him a piggy bank – it was one of those BNZ pigs, it was Matti’s Undies Fund. He drew a pair of undies on the pig and took it to parties and people would put little coins in it.’’
Jeanette smiles as she says: ‘‘Little coins, little undies.’’ But then her smile fades.
‘‘I’ll always remember Matthew saying, ‘I lost everything in the earthquake but I’ve got the things that are most important to me and that is my family and friends,’’ she recalls.
‘‘He said ‘one day I’ll tell my kids that I have survived the world’s greatest earthquake and walked away with nothing.’ ’’
February 9, 2011
Matti celebrates his 25th birthday with a big party with family and friends.
‘‘Matthew had an absolutely wicked sense of humour,’’ says Bruce. ‘‘His godmother was down from Rotorua, he sat down and said ‘it’s my special day, it’s all about me, stand up and say one thing about me’.
‘‘I remember exactly what I said and it’s not something the family like me to repeat. I said ‘every time I look at you it reminds me not to buy condoms from Bin Inn’. He thought it was that funny that he posted it on his Facebook page.’’
Sarah remembers her ‘‘best friend’’ Matti’s antics with his band, Athenic, and their blue tour van, nicknamed Po.
‘‘They rented a manor in Yaldhurst Rd. They knew no-one would rent it to a death metal band so they all wore suits and said they were in a jazz band.
‘‘There were 15 rooms and 10 boys living there ... It would be nothing for one of the boys to come home to see Matti sketching a naked woman on the couch,’’ Sarah says.
When she was studying to become a pre-school teacher, Matti was working as a barista nearby.
‘‘I’d go to him to get my coffee and he’d always write ‘good morning’ or ‘have a good day’ on it.’’
February 21, 2011
Matti is thrilled. He’s been asked by the Design and Arts College to hold an exhibition of his artwork.
Some of his art is hanging on the walls at Southern Ink when Detective Kelvin Holden walks in, looking for a tattoo. Matti creates an Italian design, in memory of Kelvin’s family, on his arm.
‘‘It is weird to look back,’’ says Jeanette. ‘‘The day before the earthquake, Matti did Kelvin’s tattoo, in remembrance of some of his family who’d passed away. Then Kelvin was involved with investigating Matti’s death for six years.’’
After work, Matti makes time to help a friend. ‘‘One of his friends needed a model for the photography course she was doing so he posed for her. We have got all these pictures of him taken the night before the earthquake,’’ says Bruce.
‘‘They’re the last ones of him. It’s almost like the pictures were meant to be.’’
February 22, 2011
Matti is at work at Southern Ink tattoo parlour. He likes to get in early and make things nice, to impress his boss.
‘‘On his way to work he would take time to smile at people and say something nice to them to start their day off on a positive way,’’ says Jeanette. She read this in his journal.
‘‘He decided that there weren’t enough smiles in the world, people walked with their heads down, looking miserable.’’
Matti is busy today. He has designed a tattoo for a young American tourist, Rachel Conley.
Conley – in the parlour with her friend, Jessica Kinder – wants to mark the end of her big OE before flying back to the States the next day.
‘‘The tattoo she was going to get was ‘there is nowhere that you are, that you’re not meant to be’. It’s like, where you are at the moment, you are meant to be there...’’ Jeanette explains.
She makes an appointment for 3pm for the tattoo itself and heads off for coffee next door while Matti takes a 10 minute break.
At 12.51pm, Kinder pauses to close Southern Ink’s heavy sliding door, as Conley walks ahead up Colombo Street.
As the magnitude-6.3 earthquake hits, Kinder watches as a heavy slab falls and traps Conley. She dies of her injuries that same day.
Matti is last seen at his desk at 12.46pm, drawing. When the earthquake hits, he too runs outside and is struck by falling masonry.
He would have died ‘‘almost immediately’’ due to his injuries, the coroner later reports.
That night, Jeanette, Bruce and Sarah sit up waiting for word on Matthew. ‘‘I thought ‘there’s been a mistake, he will turn up’,’’ says Jeanette. ‘‘Every time the phone went or someone knocked on the door it will be him.
‘‘You think that it’s a mistake until it’s absolutely confirmed.’’
Late February 2011
‘‘I’ll always remember the first newspaper that came out after the earthquake had a half page picture of Matti and yet his body hadn’t been identified,’’ says Jeanette.
A picture from Matti’s Facebook page of him wearing glasses was used. It still accompanies some stories. She hates it. ‘‘It just doesn’t look anything like him, it was a joke thing.’’
Sarah was with one of Matti’s bandmates when she got a phone call. ‘‘It was the day after the earthquake and someone was asking for an interview about Matthew’s death. We hadn’t had the body back . . . give it a minute.’’
Matthew was one of the first earthquake victims named. Jeanette looks off into the distance. ‘‘It doesn’t hit your head that he’s gone until he’s identified.’’
It is a couple of days after the earthquake.
‘‘I don’t know where she came from, one of the social agencies, a woman turned up on our doorstep,’’ says Bruce. ‘‘We didn’t know who she was, we didn’t invite her. She sat down, said ‘how are you?’ I may have said ‘f... off’.’’
The woman burst into tears. ‘‘She said ‘one of my friends is in the CTV building’.
‘‘I said ‘clearly you shouldn’t be here, would you like some of these tissues? Go anywhere but don’t stay here please.’’’
As part of the victim identification process, Jeanette and Bruce give a DNA sample to police. ‘‘It was callous,’’ says Bruce.
They were taken into separate rooms. Jeanette remembers a policeman explaining to her that they had to be really sure that it was Matthew. ‘‘A policeman took me outside and asked if there was any doubt as to whether Bruce was Matthew’s dad. I said ‘no, there is no doubt.’
‘‘Apparently after the Bali bombings there was a high rate of fathers who found out they weren’t the dad.’’
The police did a good job but were not emotionally equipped to help, says Bruce.
‘‘They spend their whole life dealing with baddies and bastards, having to deal with nice grieving people they don’t know what to do. It’s one of the things we found really strange. These guys are here to help us but they really don’t have the ability to do it because they haven’t been trained.’’
March 2011
It is two weeks after Matthew’s death. The funeral director comes to talk to the family.
‘‘He came to our house and there were monarch butterflies all around us,’’ says Jeanette. ‘‘Then, at the first memorial service they released monarch butterflies. Whenever I feel upset, a monarch butterfly always appears.’’
Up to 800 people attend Matthew’s funeral.
‘‘There were lots of people from death metal bands,’’ Bruce says. ‘‘They are spooky to look at but the most kind hearted people.
‘‘The girls in the office at Lamb & Hayward were scared to leave because these blokes dressed in black with tattoos and piercings and noisy cars were outside.
‘‘One security guy said ‘you realise, of course, that half of them are vegetarian’ which summarises them up nicely.’’
That was a Monday. On Tuesday, they go back to work. ‘‘We didn’t want to be alone,’’ says Jeanette.
‘‘We didn’t want people knocking on our door. I was scared that I would get into a state that maybe I couldn’t get out of.’’
Matthew’s ashes are buried at Harewood Memorial Gardens. On what would have been Matthew’s 30th birthday, February 9, 2015, Jeanette decided she wanted to have a headstone for her son at the official Avonhead Park Cemetery site for victims of the earthquake.
‘‘She felt it was something she needed to do, she was angry that there were blank spots there,’’ says Bruce.
‘‘If you haven’t got 185 names at Avonhead, there’s something seriously wrong.’’
‘‘I thought ‘there’s been a mistake, he will turn up’. Every time the phone went or someone knocked on the door it will be him.’’ Jeanette McEachen