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Roger Rabbits with |
There was a small wooden cross at the foot of a traffic light standard on Chapel St.
Was white, but after three, four, or five years, it was well weathered by sun, sea air and sou’ westers.
Probably went unnoticed by most.
But every morning as I traipsed up Chapel St towards the “factory”, I’d stop for the red light outside the Bay Central shopping precinct. And that’s when my gaze would wander off to the wee cross.
“Mōrena Iris. Hugs you!” Or some other banal, idle comment.
And “Iris” because the day I first noticed the cross it was framed by the huge, full arch of a rainbow. Spectacular and serendipitous. And “Iris” after the Greek Goddess of the rainbow. Her seven radiant colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – symbolised the path linking heaven and earth, and connecting the Gods to humanity.
It would be comforting to think Iris passed up that trail after her fatal accident five years ago. You don’t have to “believe” to appreciate the story.
For a few years I didn’t know the “real” Iris. I had no idea who that wee cross memorialised. I didn’t want to know. I had my own romantic skew on things. “Miss you Iris”, or, “Gorgeous day Iris” I would utter to her. Or something equally inane.
Of course, I now know that “Iris” was actually “Maree”. Maree Geary, a well-known Ōtūmoetai woman, partner and mother. She died as 2021 was dying: December 8, 2021. Her car was involved in a three-way crash and ended up submerged, and upside down, in the deep inner Waikareao Estuary channel that runs alongside Chapel St.
But I knew none of that. Not until recently.
So Maree got Iris. Iris of the rainbow, with all respect. I hope those close to their Maree and my Iris will forgive my reverie. We were complete strangers who had our own special connection. And at both ends of the working day, and often in between, we simply exchanged a greeting. “Gidday you!” Sometimes just a muted thought.
Dignity
My reasoning being I didn’t want to be one of the 40,000 or so cars, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians who passed up and down the causeway each day and regarded that crazy, calamitous moment in time like yesterday’s news story. I wanted to pluck her from the mire of road accident statistics and give her dignity. And keep the memory alive.
And whenever I drove out of the shopping precinct and hit the red lights at the T-intersection onto Chapel St, there she was again. Eternally present. The tiny white cross at the foot of the traffic light standard warning me of red light runners. It can be scary there. I could have been T-boned there several times had Iris not been there alerting me to be cautious, defensive, and to stay alive.
Kia ora Iris. Your work is good work.
Then just recently, about 12.40am one Friday, a telepathic message woke me. One of those bolt-upright moments. The stomach heaves. Something is not right.
There were flickering lights over the causeway. Red and blue flickering lights. Police car lights, close by the wee white cross on Chapel St. Close by Iris. Not again?
‘Again’
It was “again”. The next morning a friend who was at the precinct messaged me that another car had gone into the estuary off Chapel St. One person made it out of the wreck, but later the body of a young woman was recovered by divers. Just 18 years old. “A bright light,” they said. A light sadly snuffed out. “A beautiful young life taken far too soon.” Decades too soon.
Later that day, a huge industrial crane and vehicle transporter arrived at the scene. The car was hauled from the estuary and dumped, with a graunch, on the footpath. The car was a sad, broken, sodden sight – it look like it wanted to offer an explanation, an apology, for what had happened. It will probably throw up its secrets some time. Just not that day.
There was a businesswoman standing transfixed beside me. And quietly weeping.
“Because I know somewhere there’s a mum whose heart has just been broken.” The businesswoman was a mother too and couldn’t imagine getting a knock on the door from a policeman in the dead of night. “I wouldn’t answer it. I wouldn’t!”
The accident was widely reported because of the sameness to the 2021 fatality – two cars in the harbour in close proximity, and the lives of two local women lost. I read the Bay of Plenty Times story about the connection, about the victims, and that was the day my “Iris” reverted to Maree. I couldn’t ignore the reality any longer.
‘Miss you both’
Next morning I was having coffee at the shopping centre and gazing mindlessly over Waikareao. She had metamorphosed – yesterday brooding and menacing, now living her name, “sparkling water of the new day,” rippling and glittering.
The little white cross his still there, and the world drives, walks, cycles by obliviously again. “Mōrena ladies. Miss you both.”
