Bill – Takapuna
“I feel proud of Auckland, definitely. I love Auckland.
I’ve lived here not so many years, about 14 years. I was born in a small city called Hastings on the East Coast, but as I said I’m proud to be from Auckland. I’m proud, very proud to be a New Zealander, a Kiwi, and I spent most of my life overseas in South America where things are quite different in every way. It’s really refreshing and lovely to live in this country. I’m proud as a person right now, I’m going through a difficult stage in my life.
I left university in Wellington, and then Christchurch, and then I joined the Meteorological Service. It was the headquarters in Kelburn, Wellington, and in 1966/67 I spent one year on an island in the Kermadec Islands, Raoul Island. I came back after one year and I had my salary paid all at once so my pockets were loaded with money, and with two friends of mine who were also on the island we bought a sailboat and started to sail around New Zealand for awhile, getting practice.
We wanted to sail around the South Pacific, but then I decided that I wanted to do something different and more difficult. I was in a personal state and I was comfortable. I wanted to go where everything was different. One of my friends who had the boat with me was sent down to the South Pole, to Antarctica, and we had to wait for him to come back after one year.
I thought, while I’m waiting, I will travel. So I decided to choose a country. At that time of course, 1967/68, was the big OE and most young people like myself went to Australia or went to England. I wanted something different so I decided to go to South America, and I got a one-way ticket on a very infamous ship called the Achille Lauro. I say infamous, because a few years later it was hijacked by terrorists; the first time it was hijacked. Then it burnt twice and it finally sunk, thank God, off the coast of Somalia.
Anyway, I landed in South America and I worked, without speaking any Spanish, in Argentina and then I travelled around and I finally ended up Peru. As I was a qualified English teacher I needed money, so I started to teach English and I stayed there for about 27 years. I had my own English institute, and three years before I turned 40 I got married to a Peruvian lady and then we came to New Zealand. Then we went back to Peru, we came back again, and I still teach English, but I also do tourism. I take Spanish-speaking tourists around the North Island and South Island, small groups, 10 or 12. So I keep myself busy.
Unfortunately my only son, 29 years old, died five months ago in Paris, France of a heart attack. So I’m still getting over, or trying to get over, the grieving process. I’m not in a happy mood right now.
It’s difficult for me to speak about it, but I would like to speak about it. I’m still going through the grieving process. I find it very difficult. How could I say it? I cry every day; put it that way. I cry every day. I think I need counselling. I definitely need counselling. I have an additional problem in that my father… my father died a few years ago; 1986 I think it was. Yeah, ’86, and I don’t know where he’s buried. He died in Australia, all I know, but I haven’t gone through the grieving process with my father, and that has been an important factor in my life that I haven’t been able to find out.
I’ve been trying and trying for 30 years, and I can’t find out where he’s buried, and I need to go to the cemetery to find his grave and to grieve for him. So that’s been with me for the last 30 years. Then on top of that I had my son. So I’ve got the two, sort of a double-whammy you might say, that I’m finding it very difficult to overcome and get through this process. I hope that in the short term things will get better, but at present I’m in a bit of a mess, put it mildly. That’s about all I can say about that. If you want to ask more questions, go ahead.
Any ideas? Well, strangely enough I went to the doctor yesterday. It was yesterday in fact and I spoke to a nurse and she had spoken to my doctor, and my doctor is a very good friend of ours. My wife and I, she had recognised that I needed help so she wanted to help me with some counselling, a psychologist.
I answered lots of questions on a couple of sheets and so she is going to contact the relevant authorities and I’m sure that maybe in a week or two, at the public hospital, I will be enrolled in some sort of a grief counselling course which I think I need, because I can’t continue in my present state. I have a comment about everything unfortunately. Yes, I think the first step is to recognise of course that I need help.
I think that’s a general perception of people who have depression who have other illnesses, and I thought that I could get through this alone by myself in my own grieving process. I have read quite a bit about the grieving process, and these things have not really helped me. I think it is important and I’m very happy right now that I will be able to take this grief counselling course. I’m sure it’s going to help me a lot.
Go next door and embrace your neighbour. It’s the community. We must have a community feeling, looking after one another, looking after each other, and not stand back and keep your own little problems to yourself and you see other people that need help and you obviously know that you have your own personal problems, but there are always people next to you, near you, or you know of that have greater problems than you, and I think it’s necessary to just reach out to a person even if you don’t know the person very well. Just go and visit the person and show that you care, that you understand, that you’re there to help, and I think it’s just, as I said, love for your fellowman and woman.”
