Having lost her soulmate to cancer, Melissa Vining has just spent her first New Year in 18 years without her husband Blair.
Mr Vining spent the last year of his life campaigning for better cancer care in New Zealand, and she said it was his positivity and hopes for others that pushed him through to each milestone of his epic journey.
The 39-year-old Southland father of two died in October, almost a year after being diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer.
However, the family are not planning on staying sad; instead celebrating the holiday season with friends and family.
"We could sit here and be sad or we could celebrate how Blair would celebrate, and that’s what we’re going to try and do."
While the last year had been hard on the family, Ms Vining said good memories were made.
Sitting and despairing about the trauma the family faced was not something Mr Vining encouraged — instead the family worked to tick off items on his bucket list, and lived for each day they were given with him.
That list was created just over a year ago, on December 31.
One of the items was a "final farewell" held at Bill Richardson Transport World. The money raised from the event went to Hospice and the Cancer Society.
"Blair wanted to purchase a double medical bed so that patients and their families could be on the bed together."
His Facebook page, "Blair Vining’s Epic Journey", generated nationwide support and was used as a platform to create conversation about under-resourced district health boards.
More than 140,700 people signed the petition that called for better cancer care and the creation of a national cancer agency. Since the petition was presented, the Government had announced its New Zealand Cancer Action Plan 2019-2029.
In January last year, the Vinings headed to Wellington for the National Cancer Conference.
"[Blair] went there with the intention of telling the doctors and experts that were there about his experience in the hope they would do something to ensure that would never happen to someone else again," Ms Vining said.
Ms Vining said a lot of people with cancer undergoing treatment were too vulnerable to speak out, and that "because Blair felt well enough to speak up, he genuinely felt he was speaking for all those people who were messaging him".
"What Blair did was make people aware of how bad the system is. We had no idea how the system was broken until Blair got cancer."
The Vinings’ journey was not over, as several of the father and husband’s hopes were yet to be realised.
One of those was the establishment of a charity hospital in Southland; Ms Vining said a big announcement was expected to be made this month.
She said she had also promised him she would continue to push for better access to life-extending drugs, and to lower the bowel screening age to 50.
The reason Mr Vining was able to live as good a life as possible during his last year alive was because he was able to access private healthcare, she said.
"If he had died two months after diagnosis, some of those things would never have been ticked off. Lilly’s bucket list wish was to have her wedding dance with him at our vow renewal and that is something she will never ever be able to get back, so she’s got that special memory."
One of the most difficult things for the parents was seeing their two children hurting.
"There are not good supports available for children that are going to lose their parent.
"Watching our girls go through that kind of pain and trauma over and over again during the last 11 and a-half months because one minute Blair would be dying but would then outlive that ... we went through massive traumas in a very short space of time."
She said when he did die, they were unprepared.
"The final two weeks were excruciatingly painful, watching him deteriorate ... losing your dad at 17 and 13 is cruel."
They savoured every moment they could together during that last year, and Ms Vining said they surrounded themselves as often as they could with family and friends.
"He fought really hard, and it was very cruel for us watching him the last days ... specifically when he died — it was just him and I, alone."
She said experiences such as the one her family went through helped to highlight the good in humanity.
"We just feel the love from the Southland community, through the entirety of Blair’s journey ... the positive of it is that we got to see the absolute best of our community."
She said Mr Vining was the best dad, husband and friend.
"I don’t think there is one quality that defines Blair. He loved big, he was kind, he role-modelled great values to the kids he coached and to our kids. Just being around him makes you want to be a better person," Ms Vining said.
