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Source: Reuters -
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By the time we stepped off the last plane in Perpignan - there'd been four flights, more than 30 hours in the air and I was on auto pilot. But as I walked across the tarmac I kept thinking about the journey the families of the men who died in the air crash took just a year ago .
Most of us will whittle away a flight watching movies, fighting for the arm rest and hopefully sleeping a little. But if you choose there is plenty of time to think.
It's hard to imagine what it was like to fly half way across the world knowing all the way that your husband, brother or son was unlikely to be alive. Thirty hours to think about the accident, what could have been and perhaps hanging on to the tiny hope that your loved one made it.
It is a beautiful place the South of France, though at this time of year it's very quiet, the restaurants are closed, the horses on the lavish merry go round are boarded up and it's only the rugged up dog walkers that are making any impact on the stretch of beach.
It's here the families would have stood watching as the Navy and French authorities tried to find clues as to why the Airbus suddenly plunged into the water. And maybe more importantly to recover the bodies of the five New Zealanders and two German men onboard.
A year on the families will be back standing on this beach. This time the trip was planned but it still must have been tough.
Once again they'd have time to think about the first year without those family members - missed birthdays, anniversaries. For Tracey Marsh, the wife of Christchurch engineer Noel, she's had their third child a baby girl without him.
This week on the beach at Perpignan there will once again be
some sad scenes.
Melissa Stokes is reporting for TVNZ from Perpignan
for the first anniversary.
