I AM HAVING DINNER WITH MY COUSIN NAT. WE ARE once again examining the inexhaustible topic of our family but, unlike past dinners, the excavation this time is slow and mindful, layer by delicate layer. I am sharing with her what I have uncovered so far, the memories and relics of our grandfather, and Nat is attentive, considerate, waiting for more.
And I am starting to realise that I am not doing all this digging around just for me. I am doing it for her, too, and for our siblings. For our parents, and our cousins, and our children. Frank lies at the centre of this tangle of threads that are slowly starting to unravel—the threads of our past, threads that bind us, that sometimes choke us, yet connect us still.
There is fear in this story of ours. It is dark and murky and sticky. If I keep going, if I keep rummaging around in the past, what else will I uncover? I can’t help but ask Nat—for all the fun and mischief and adventures of our shared childhood—what will our mothers say? What will they say when they read the truth behind Frank’s journey home? What will they say when they realise that some of our family stories were crafted in trauma, and aren’t even true? What will they say when they learn how I feel about what Erebus has done to us—the mistruths and trauma and grief of it all?
The story that never goes away.
Talking with Nat, I yearn for our childhood. I miss our little gang of two, giggling as we’d cover for each other or run for our lives when we couldn’t quite pull it off. I am enjoying the easy reconnection that comes with being cousins, Nat’s gentle ways and her warm, welcoming home. But the more I delve, the more I realise this yearning can’t be satisfied. It is reminiscent of the ache that took me to the Scottish town where my father was born, or to the fields of ANZAC gravestones in the Somme and Passchendaele. In these places, I found a peace, a putting-right of sorts. Unexplainable and undeniable.
Erebus … Erebus … Erebus …
I feel a yearning for Antarctica, too, but this I can do nothing about. Stuart Leighton told me that he understood, that he feels homesick for the Great White Continent, and I wonder, Will we ever get there? Will Stuart get to lay those old ghosts to rest? Will I get to stand in the place of my grandfather’s last breath? And, if not, will this yearning ever leave us?
This can’t be all there is to Erebus.
But still, I worry that to carry on would mean bigger avalanches, endless rivers of tears and breaking hearts. That fear swirls around me, clawing at my legs, inching its way up towards my chest. I think of Worser Bay beach and hot summer days, of my brother and I swimming out to our favourite jumping spot, which we dubbed ‘the table’—the old concrete foundations of the original surf club. The low, rhythmic sound of the ferry humming its way home would vibrate through the water and into our chests as we fought to see who could hold their breath the longest. If the tide was low enough, we’d touch the bottom, squelching broken shells and gritty sand between our toes, racing other kids to get back to ‘the table’ first. Cheats! Then fear would grip my heart, and I’d haul my feet up on to the rocks and look around me. Are there sharks out there? It was always hard to pluck up the courage to swim back to shore.
I am at a point where I have already learned so much—too much, perhaps—yet I cannot stop. I cannot halt this forward momentum. If my grandfather made it home from the mountain, then surely I will make it back from this, too.
That night, I have a dream. I’m knocking on Nat’s front door, but no one answers. Her porch transforms into the front doorstep of my childhood home. I knock again, but this time I know who is on the other side. Frank opens the door, the hanging fern and fluffy carpet from the past cosy and comforting. Is it okay that I’m doing all this? Is it okay that I’m telling your story? But there are no words, only warm, radiating love.
I wake up feeling lighter, safer, calmer.
I am in search of anything that will give me hope. A radical hope, a hope that is directed towards finding any future goodness that could possibly come from our most tragic of pasts, even when it seems there is none. Radical hope demands a special kind of courage. It asks you to be vulnerable. It asks you to believe in goodness for all. And, most importantly, it asks you to let go.
Radical hope is more than just optimism. As Jonathan Lear, who coined the term, explains in his book Radical Hope, it’s the kind of hope that transcends our current ability to understand what the future might look like, but it knows—deeply knows—that the future is good. Even when we can’t see what it might look like. Even when we’re burying and mourning our dead. Even when we lack the ability to understand it.
And, god knows, I’m trying to understand it.
I felt radical hope when I discovered the commemorative book of letters my family contributed to for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disaster—but, as with all things Erebus, it was overwhelming at the time so I filed it away for later. Now, with all I have learned, I feel compelled to take another look.
When I arrive at Antarctica New Zealand in Christchurch, I am ushered into Shackleton’s Hut—not, obviously, the snow-covered shack at chilly Cape Royds, but a replica, a meeting room refurbished in Shackleton’s honour.
It’s been almost fifteen years since I last flicked through Flight TE901 Remembered, but this time I’m ready to read it with an open heart. The original copy of the album lives here at Antarctica New Zealand; there’s also a copy safely locked away at Scott Base for anyone fortunate enough to get there. This book was collated in 2004, and contains a collection of letters, stories and messages from relatives of the passengers and crew who were on the flight. It is only available to families to view.
Within moments of opening the leather-bound cover, my chest begins to tighten. Inside are the well-preserved memories and stories of the families of Erebus; their history, their love and their pain. It is still overwhelming. It’s like peeking in through someone’s lounge window when they are at their most vulnerable, and seeing myself reflected there.
Page by page, this encyclopaedia of the dead reveals itself. I glance at the letters with surnames that begin with A and B, working my way towards C for Christmas. I turn a page and see the familiar handwriting of my aunts and a cousin, the same handwriting that usually graces birthday cards and letters and recipes. I keep reading and turning until I find a love letter written by my grandmother Eileen to her beloved Frank. It is brief, to the point—my grandmother never had any need for fancy eulogies or emotional flourishes. Even so, after all these years, I can still feel her love for him warming me gently from the inside out. Through her words, carefully preserved, Eileen has shown me a version of love that I had not fully appreciated until today, that of timeless devotion.
My initial connection to Antarctica was steeped in tragedy and not of my own choosing, but reading my grandmother’s love letter I feel inspired to find a new connection—to understand the gifts this frozen landscape has to offer, to rekindle my adventurous spirit outside this tragedy, and to honour the stories and timeless devotion of all those who wrote love letters to the dead.
As we approach the fortieth anniversary of Erebus, I have spent a lot of time thinking about love and remembrance. I wonder who among us will be loved and remembered with such timeless devotion? Who among us should be so blessed?
Light is breaking through the darkness that has engulfed me in recent times, but I still find myself too overwhelmed to read all the letters written here—I can hardly bear to open my heart to the grief and love of my own family.
I close the book’s cover, and wipe my eyes.
Within moments, I am joined by another person, here in Shackleton’s hut: then CEO of Antarctica New Zealand, Peter Beggs. He speaks passionately about Antarctica and his team of people. He explains how Scott Base remembers the Erebus Disaster every year—how the flag is lowered to half-mast, a wreath is laid and a service is held, how they hold the candle for families each anniversary in our absence. He tells me the crash site is a no-fly zone, that it is tapu, a sacred mausoleum, honoured and protected like several other sites of historical significance around the vast white continent.
I try to focus my questions, but end up stumbling over my thoughts and my words. I have been knocked off kilter by my grandmother’s love letter, and I cannot find my footing. All I want to do is reopen the book and read it again, and again, and again. My focus isn’t great, our conversation stilted and unproductive.
Eileen’s love letter, coupled with Beggs’ artificial charm, leaves me feeling disappointed and drained. (At this point, I have no idea that Beggs will soon be bound for Scott Base to oversee the filming of an Air New Zealand inflight safety video set in Antarctica, which, after years of silence from the airline, simply serves to reopen the wound for many of those affected by Erebus.)
On my way out, though, he tells me about another commemorative book from the twentieth anniversary. It is held at Archives New Zealand in the Christchurch CBD.
There are more love letters?
I make a mental note to look it up, filing it away for later, later, later.
The potential of what I might find there provides a glimmer of hope, a shaft of light growing stronger amid the snowstorm and the debris. I can’t keep hold of the old ways, not after everything I’ve seen and heard, after all the discoveries about Frank and Erebus and my family.
But how do I recreate my life in light of these new discoveries, according to these new principles and values, with an old song in my heart?
The soapbox of vengeance and righteousness might feel more comfortable and satisfying and just (whatever that means), but I no longer believe in it. Radical hope has wormed its way into my heart, challenging me to question what I know, to open myself up to something new.
I am trying to imagine what my family might need in order to move forward, what our new values and stories might be if we could recreate them from scratch. What our family might look like, seen through the lens of radical hope.
But, if I find out what this might be, will anyone be willing to take me up on it? Or will they choose to keep hold of the stories that reinforce how difficult this path has been, how much pain we’ve experienced, how much grief we are still suffering?
Staying the same would certainly be easier. I should know.
Amid all the interviews and research of the past year, I realise I have been collecting evidence of radical hope—I just couldn’t see it until now. I have begun to hear the whispers of what I need in order to understand collective grief and healing, and my role in it.
It’s a balmy Tuesday evening when I next arrive in Christchurch, here to see the commemorative book from the twentieth anniversary. The following morning, I make my way into the city and I walk along the Avon. I realise it’s been over a decade since my last visit to the CBD—I haven’t been here since before the earthquakes. I’m shocked by the brokenness that remains in the city, now peppered with shining steel and newly sown grass. I’m not really paying attention to where I am, and when I look up from the flowing water and the cyclists I stumble across a marble wall and into a memorial. I see browning wreaths and soggy teddy bears and faded photos in laminate. It is one week since the seventh anniversary of the devastating earthquake that shook Canterbury in February 2011, and the people here are still in mourning.
A line of people stand with me, solemn before this wailing wall. I see people weeping, reaching out to touch a name or leave a memento or say a prayer. I run my palm across the marble and I feel the weighty permanence of stone and love and memories. These people aren’t here because of a date or a time or an obligation. They are here, like me, to honour and remember and pay their respects. I imagine Frank’s name one day carved in stone.
The heart of this city is still struggling, but there is hope.
I carry on towards Archives New Zealand, a building still standing amid all the newness and the empty lots. I feel hopeful, hesitant. I am here to read more love letters to the dead. The letters in this album have been stored here for almost 20 years, diligently filed in plastic leaves, clustered tokens of love and longing for each person lost that day. At the rear of the book, recovery staff have written their own accounts and thoughts.
An archivist flips the book open at random for me, and I see my mother’s handwriting on the pale grey paper. ‘How funny,’ I remark. Embarrassed, the archivist tries to direct me back to the start, but it’s too late—my heart is already pounding. Those same cursive letters got me out of class, wished me happy birthday, and lifted my spirits during my time overseas. I know the loops and swishes of her Fs and Ls, the flicky tails of her Ms and Ns, even the repetition of her fancy Ss. I recognise each letter as I recognise her smell, her voice. The room is humming now, but I push through. I promise to be careful—these memories are to be preserved for the families of Erebus.
If I thought speaking to a few family members or police officers was dipping my toes into the icy waters of Erebus, opening this very first commemoration book is like being bowled by an avalanche. I am buried alive.
Some letters speak of pain—people wishing they had had the chance to say goodbye, describing how they still weep for all the lost years with their loved one, telling how their loved one was unidentified and there had been no one to say goodbye to.
Some letters share joy-filled memories—of being a bridesmaid, of how their lost loved one was vivacious, or perceptive, or talented, or ‘one out of the box’. Letters that describe missing their singing, or watching the rugby, or sharing a cold one. Telling them that they were universally loved, that they touched many lives, that their families were proud, blessed, fortunate to have had them as a son, daughter, friend, sister, brother.
Others speak of the recovery and those not found. Some thank the teams who worked so hard to recover the bodies. Some families had a body to bury, while other bodies remain forever on Erebus. Many state how precious their relatives were to them—that there is a bond to a place, to people both alive and dead, to a tragedy that changed us. Some mention the Waikumete Cemetery mass grave, the day they buried all the pieces of unidentified remains, wondering whether ‘they were burying your hand or leg, a part of you’. Some are written by members of the recovery team and express pride over their involvement.
Many letters share the ways we have honoured those lost since Erebus—by writing their names in foundations and extensions, by following in their footsteps, or by naming children after them. Some share the same wedding anniversary as a loved one’s wedding anniversary. Some letters tell of still having the bach, bird box, recipes, toys their loved one made.
But, above all, the messages that touch me the most are those of hope—those expecting their first child (‘your first great-grandchild’), those hoping they’ll be as good a gran, dad, aunty ‘as you were’. Those that say ‘we are who we are today because of the things you taught us’. Those who explain ‘we hope to one day put this to rest within ourselves’.
And, as for Eileen’s contribution, I find another love letter. Her very personal message breaks me apart. In a glass-walled room in a tumble-down city, I sink into my chair and weep.
Somewhere close by, a humming cell phone brings my awareness back to the book, to the table and the chair. I am in a room of researchers, all bent over their own little worlds, all looking into the past, just like me. Do they feel what they read, like I do? Do they stumble on new things and old things and get excited and scared at the same time, too? Do they ever regret unearthing another layer of a story? Do they ever regret seeing things or knowing things—things they can’t now un-know or un-see?
I return to the beginning of the book, and discover why it was created. My breath catches. I have found radical hope in action.
The creation of the twentieth-anniversary commemoration book began with an email from Joseph Madrid to Antarctica New Zealand back in 1999. Joseph wrote about healing and closure, and his desire to bring peace to a restless part of his soul. His email is now stored in the book, among the family love letters and the memories of the Operation Overdue staff.
At the time of Erebus, Joseph was a helicopter crew chief at McMurdo. When Scott Base approached the American military for help, he, like many of the Americans based in Antarctica that summer, became heavily involved in Operation Overdue. Joseph made the first successful landing on the crash site, helped to transport staff and equipment, helped recover bodies, and was flying the day the investigators recovered the black box.
When I first email Joseph, I am unsure what reception I will get. It’s been nineteen years since he wrote to Antarctica New Zealand, and 39 years since Erebus. But, to my relief, he replies instantly, agreeing to a video call the following morning from his home in Arizona. The next morning, my computer screen comes alive with a warm face and bearded grin, but before I can speak he swims slightly out of focus. There is something surreal about this moment, something that catches in my throat, even though I am excited. I wipe my watery eyes and smile. As his face comes into focus again, Joseph looks and feels familiar, even though this is the first time we’ve ever met.
I ask him about his time on Erebus, and he sighs, sinking back into the memories of the past.
‘Word was the aircraft was missing, so we went searching. When we heard it had run out of fuel, we knew it had crashed. It was finally spotted by the C-130, and the pilot said it looked like a black mark on a whiteboard. I was in the second helicopter that was dispatched to the crash site—the first one [which Rex Hendry was on] couldn’t land on account of the weather.
‘Then we went back and were able to land at the site, and we put the three Kiwi mountaineers down there [Hugh Logan, Daryll Thomson and Keith Woodford]. Well, it wasn’t really landing … The Huey has skids, so we put one skid on the side of the mountain and precariously hovered there while the mountaineers got out. They had to jump about ten feet [three metres]!
‘When I first saw the crash [from the air], I knew nobody could have survived. And then, when we got to the crash site, there were bodies strewn everywhere, and I had to get on my belly and look out the door and try to find a place to put the left skid down. From the original point where we were going to land, there were too many bodies. So, we worked our way slowly down the mountain until I could find a place where we would not land on a body. To be truthful, I almost puked my guts. I had seen stuff like that before, but not in such a great amount. I’ve had plenty of experience with death, but to me that was such a useless loss of life because it had nothing to do with war, which was my main experience of death.
‘After we took the mountaineers out to the site, we checked we had radio communications with them and we decided we’d leave them for an hour and come back. Once again, we had to do that precarious perch on the side of the mountain to pick them up. We did a debrief back at McMurdo, then about an hour or so later we flew back out. For the next two weeks, that was my job: transporting people and cargo back and forth, back and forth.’
He says this last part like it was just a job to be done—back and forth, back and forth— but having read his email to Archives New Zealand, I feel there must be more to his story. So, I share what happened within my own family while he was busy working on the mountain. I confess that it was from this point on that my family became stuck, that all the grief started. I tell Joseph that his role was vital to the safety of the recovery team, and the safekeeping of my grandfather. I tell him what Stuart Leighton told me about the recovery team finding themselves stranded on the mountain in a storm with no food and no way off; that, when the storm eased, and they heard ‘the digga-digga-digga of the helicopter, it was salvation. It meant supplies or a way home.’ Joseph chuckles, having heard the same story from many a marine.
Then, I ask Joseph about his email. Why did he feel compelled to write to Antarctica New Zealand almost 20 years after the crash? In the email, he expressed his wish to participate in a healing ceremony for himself and for the souls of those who perished on the ice. He sent over a medicine bag to be placed at the memorial site in Antarctica, and a prayer to be read during the commemoration service.
‘I had no idea they’d do it,’ Joseph says. ‘It was just my expression of how I felt about the whole thing. The twentieth anniversary hit me hard. I don’t know why, but I felt I needed to do something for my own healing, so that’s why I wrote what I did and that’s why I sent the medicine bag, because I’m Native American and I wanted to send something of my spiritual beliefs to Antarctica. They did send me a photo of my medicine bag at the cross. They couldn’t leave it down there. I don’t know where that bag is now.
‘I used to visit Scott Base a lot, because the New Zealanders —well, they adopted me. And, when new people came in, they would ask about “the Māori guy”. The [Kiwis would] say, “We don’t have a Māori guy.” “Yes you do. He’s right over there.”’
Joseph describes the ceremony he performed to call his spirit back, a Native American ritual called a ‘sweat lodge’.
‘A fire is built outside a hut, and rocks are heated until they’re red-hot. The rocks are then brought into the hut, and water is poured over them. The rocks represent the Grandfather, the hut would be Mother Earth, and the water when it’s poured over the rocks becomes like a sauna but much more intense, and the steam we call “Grandfather’s breath”. We breathe it in to purify our insides and our outsides. We pray during that time, and do different rituals while we’re in there.’
Joseph realised he needed to perform this ceremony because, he says, ‘Every November, I would get into deep depression … And, uh, about that time, I finally went to see a psychiatrist, and it turns out that one of the things I hadn’t released was the spirits of all those people. And I needed to release them from my soul, to let them go about their way. You can’t be in the military in two wars and then see a crash like that without having some kind of … yeah.’
Once again, I’m reminded that this tragedy has not only affected my family, but Joseph and his family too. Here is someone from the other side of the Pacific Ocean, from another culture and upbringing, who shares an experience of grief and trauma with someone like me, someone like Rex and Stuart and Greg and hundreds of others.
Did he experience any change, a lightness or peace, after the sweat lodge?
‘Well, it wasn’t an immediate thing. At the time, I was busy helping other veterans with the same thing, so once a week we’d do the ceremony with them, and then this one time in my prayers I broke out about the crash and I didn’t know where it had come from. It took me a while to comprehend what had happened to me.
‘When I eventually got back home, I didn’t sleep too well because I was mulling over what had just happened—this outburst that came from nowhere. As I realised what had happened, what was going on, that’s when I said, “I better go see somebody about this.” So that’s when I went to the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] and saw the psychiatrist. I don’t remember much about the first two weeks I was in there because mostly I just cried the whole time. I knew what I had to do afterwards, and it just happened to be around the twentieth anniversary.
‘Like I said, every November I get depressed, but I honour it now in such a way that I can move through it. I know I’ll still be depressed this coming November, and I always remember it, but now I do a small ceremony for myself and I try to move on. But it’s always there. It will never go away.’
I understand this. I know what it feels like to carry the dead.
Joseph’s email to Antarctica New Zealand was so moving that it sparked an invitation for others to do the same. A call for letters from families to their loved ones, and reflections from recovery and identification staff, was advertised in all the major newspapers, and Archives New Zealand said the response was overwhelming. The twentieth-anniversary commemorative book contains over a hundred letters of love, loss and courage from around the world. What’s more, it eventually led to the second commemorative book on the twenty-fifth anniversary. I mention to Joseph that anyone who opens the twentieth-anniversary book will read about him, about what he did.
He releases a deep sigh. ‘I had no idea. Wow! That’s great.’
You never know what the sparks of your own radical hope might ignite.
Not only was Joseph in the first helicopter to land on the crash site, but he also took Stuart and Greg on the first police flight to Mount Erebus. Stuart remembered the crew chief from that first flight well.
‘It was completely white. We couldn’t even see the ground, but [Joseph] knew what he was doing. He told me to jump, so I did.’
Thirty-nine years later, Stuart and Joseph eventually reconnected in Arizona.
The mountain has connected us all, and our shared experiences have formed a bond that cannot be broken. Like so many of us, Joseph still grieves each November for the 257 lives he saw scattered on the mountain. His work with indigenous healing has helped many war veterans bring peace to that restless part of their soul, to ‘call their spirit back’, as he so eloquently puts it. His email to Antarctica New Zealand speaks of the potential for healing, forgiveness and eternal connection. That is the power of the written word.
When I first started delving into Erebus, I knew healing was possible, but I just couldn’t find my way through. Then I found Joseph’s email and I knew the helicopter was coming. Digga-digga-digga. I knew I was going to make it off the mountain.
As a researcher and also as a granddaughter, to go back and revisit all of the letters in the commemorative books has been very powerful. I can now see the possibilities born of radical hope. I didn’t realise that I had been waiting for some kind of miraculous lightning bolt to strike me from the heavens, that I assumed I would be more worthy of divine intervention because I was trying to work through all this grief. But that’s just not how it works.
Joseph has shown me that sometimes healing is an active thing, to be sought out and worked upon. It won’t stop the pain from rising up inside of you, but it will help you to deal with it better. Thanks to Joseph and his email, I now get to read about love, about my family’s journey and the journey of all those families whose lives he unwittingly touched. I get to read about the power of healing.
‘I’ll carry this with me till the day I die,’ Joseph told me. ‘But I honour it every November so I can work through my depression and keep on going, and it gets better and better every year. This is as much a part of my life as it is yours, and although I didn’t have a relative that perished, I felt like their spirits were with me for a long time. They’re still with me in a way, because I remember them every November.’
Just like Rex, who goes bush each November, or Stuart, who mourns every single body he recovered, or Greg, who feels the weight of telling the truth, Joseph carries this story. So I told him, using words that never seem enough, knowing we are separated by a vast ocean and a mountain of memories of pain and loss, how grateful I am for his contribution to Erebus.
‘Well, that’s the thanks I’ve been looking for, for a long time,’ he said.
As I hold my grandfather and his fellow adventurers in my heart each November, I summon the stories inside of me, the stories of the heroes of Erebus. Thank you, Joseph Madrid, for your dedication to healing the past, and for your dedication to our families, both on and off the mountain.
Ngā mihi nui.