“He’s my husband, he’s my best friend. I just need to know what happened.”
It was only days ago that Malaysian authorities confirmed wreckage found on Reunion Island as part of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
For conspiracy theorists, the news sparked waves of further speculation.
For others who followed the story, it provided a sense of closure to a previously unsolved mystery.
But for Danica Weeks, the discovery brought nothing but more heartbreak.
It’s been 519 days since Danica’s husband Paul boarded flight MH370. Like the families of all the passengers on board, she hasn’t seen him since.
In a gut-wrenching interview with 60 Minutes tonight, Mrs. Weeks revealed her undiminished anguish over her husband’s disappearance, and her desperation for more conclusive answers.
It was 1.19 in the morning when Mrs. Weeks received the call she’d been both hoping for and dreading: news that the wreckage of her husband’s plane had been found.
“It was a double-edged sword,” an emotional Mrs. Weeks told 60 Minutes reporter Charles Wooley. “I wanted to hear [those words], but I didn’t want to hear them. And just to hear those words, I broke down in tears. I just… devastated. It was day one again.”
While those on the outside looking in might imagine that the fresh discovery brings comfort or closure, Mrs. Weeks insists it has done the opposite.
“It doesn’t answer… It doesn’t stop the constant, you know, him sitting in the plane and where did it land, you know? What was his final moments? What… It never stops any of that because it’s just a piece of the plane. If someone handed to you the rear-vision mirror of your loved one’s car and said, ‘This is it, we know they’ve gone. Please move on – could you?’ I don’t think anyone could.”
“Just one piece is not enough. And people will… you know, people can look and go, ‘Oh she’s crazy,’ you know? And that’s fine. But come walk a day in my shoes and see… Go through your brain every night and dream of him walking out that door and kissing him goodbye and saying ‘I love you’.”
And dream of him she does, suffering from crippling nightmares “too horrible” to recount.
“I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I feel physically sick all the time. I wake up in nightmares, I wake up perspiring. And it just… it’s just haunting, because I don’t know the full story, you know?”
It’s not only Mrs. Weeks affected by the crushing uncertainty surrounding her husband’s fate. The couple’s two children, Lincoln, four, and Jack, two, are also beginning to look for answers about their father’s sudden disappearance.
“Lincoln is nearly five, so he asks a lot of questions. He knows Dad was on a plane. He has asked me before, and once, I felt very bad – I snapped at him. I said, ‘I just don’t know, Lincoln’.”
Explaining Paul’s absence to her children is complex and fraught, not least because Danica herself is still struggling to find answers.
“I’m not gonna lie to him. I don’t want to lie to my children… And tell them some story that they… that turns around to not be true. So I just tell them the truth – that I don’t know.”
The boys are starting to comprehend what has happened, with four-year-old Lincoln telling two-year-old Jack that their dad is “in Heaven.”
“Jack’s learnt… He said the other day to me, ‘Dad’s dead’. And I was… I was just blown away. And it just pains me. It’s not only the pain of thinking what happened to him and how did this happen, but what he’s missing out on with those children.”
In the year since Mrs. Weeks first appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss Paul’s disappearance, not much has changed.
“This started minute by minute. It turned into hour by hour. I’ve never got past day by day. There is no… My life stopped that day.”
As interviewer Charles Wooley observed, the cliche that “time heals all wounds” doesn’t seem to apply to the tragedy of MH370 and the pain it continues to bring to relatives of those on board.
“Time hasn’t healed this. It’s made it harder,” Mrs. Weeks responded. “He’s my husband, he’s my best friend. I just need to know what happened.”
While some Australians question the continued search for MH370, anything but continuing to search for answers is unthinkable to those affected – not only for their own peace of mind, but to ensure that no other families are forced to endure the pain they’ve experienced in the last year and a half.
“Husbands, wives, children, get on planes, and we still don’t know what’s happened. And the authorities, I’ve asked and asked and asked what their thoughts are, and they’ve said, ‘We don’t know and we can’t guarantee this won’t happen again.’ This can’t happen again.”
It’s clear that, no matter what authorities decide, Mrs. Weeks will never give up on the search for her other half.
“You know, I always said 50% of my soul is on that plane. He was my husband, my best friend. He was my world.”
“I think… my soul’s gone. I feel numb. And will I ever get that back? I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Do you think we should continue to search for MH370?
Read more:
Finally, some closure for the family and friends of MH370 victims.
Confirmation debris found on Reunion Island is from missing plane MH370.
The heartbreaking tweets of a girl whose dad is missing on flight MH370.