ROSIE’S ALL SHOOK UP AGAIN
The day the 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch is just one of three days in which Rosie Belton's life was changed forever. Last year, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and she had major brain surgery 15 years ago
On a good day, I think I’ll be around a very long time, and then I have a bad day, and I’m in pain, and I am not so sure.
I used to work in the theatre as a director, producer and writer, and also as a casting director for TV and film. That career ended the day I fell over dancing at a wedding on February 7, 2004.
It was a beautiful day in a farm setting and I was dancing at about 11pm. I tripped and fell backwards heavily on the grass. I cried with the shock of the fall and the pain, but it was late, we were having fun, so nothing another Chardonnay and a few more dances would not help. I even got up on stage and sang.
On March 12, 2004, I was diagnosed with a subdural bleed, which had been a ticking time bomb in my head. I had only a few hours to live when I finally got into the operating theatre. The surgeon showed me the hand drill he would use before they wheeled me in. I had another bleed three weeks later.
I was 54 and I felt demolished. I was on walking sticks, I couldn’t drive for five years and my career was in tatters. That was when I started writing in a journal in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.
My first book, called Just a Bang on the Head, about my brain injury was published in 2008. I had become a writer. I was working on my second book, Wild Blackberries–Recipes-and Memories at a New Zealand Table, when the earthquakes
started. The first shake was on my birthday, September 4, 2010.
I started writing about that then, thinking there would be a few strange weeks. Then February 22 happened. It was so difficult for me still on a walking stick, and the last thing you need with balance issues is the earth shaking and rolling under you.
There were 12 of us including our children, grandchildren and various pets in Christchurch at that time, and none of our houses were liveable. Within 20 seconds, we lost my husband’s offices and all four family homes. But we had no injuries or loss of life. We were the lucky ones.
My daughter decided to take her children and move north away from the quakes. I was emotional about losing my grandchildren, but I felt so embarrassed about my feelings. There were people I knew who had lost a child and others who had lasting injuries.
We lived in a caravan, a bach, in friends’ homes, anywhere we could while we waited and waited, first for the engineers to come, then the assessors. One expert told us, ‘If I were you, I’d spend as little time upstairs as possible, as your house is split in two with one half wanting to leave the other half.’
I wrote in my journal to help myself. This was a way I could get my thoughts down and when I read back over those entries, it was quite interesting how often I mentioned food and flowers. I needed beauty because everything around us was so ugly.
Before the earthquakes, I never thought about what happened to people after an initial life-changing
event that happen st tol large number sb of people simultaneously, which is why I wrote Living with Earthquakes
and Their Aftermath. I wanted the book to come out so that future generations could look at it and have some understanding.
Finally, by 2017, I was able to walk without my stick, which I’d been using since my brain injury and was feeling normal again. But then on June 14, 2018, I had some bad news.
I was in my doctor’s office on that day to get scan results and he told me it looked like I had a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, treatable but not curable. It could be a slowmoving cancer, but then I had probably already had it for two years, so …
I was in complete shock and had to do an event that night speaking at a book launch. I got to my car and rang my sister-in-law because I knew she’d be calming. Then I went and had my nails done as it was already planned – crazy but helpful. I got through the event, but driving home I cried and I raged.
I turn 70 soon, but I’d like to see a lot more years yet. A lot of people got ill after the earthquakes, and I know I had a precursor condition, but I can’t help thinking that it could have been the stress that sent me to the next phase.
My daughter wants me to meditate, but I like to do it my own way. I lie on my bed and look out the window at the bird life, watching the kereru and white pigeons sitting on the cabbage tree seed heads, munching away.
I listen to music – I love jazz. And I enjoy Facebook Messenger and Instagram. I have friends all over the world, so no matter what time I am awake at night, someone is awake on the other side of the world to talk to.
I want to make the most of the time I have, so I’m keeping my life rich with visual beauty and with purpose. I’m also writing another book.”