“He and Zoe were seated in the front row of the Airbus A320-200. I thought the chances of retrieving their bodies would be highly likely because their seats, 1A and 1C, would be sheltered from the currents in the water. But then I heard that the cockpit had separated from the main fuselage and my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach,” Mei Yi recalls.
While Chi-man’s body was recovered a month after the accident, Zoe’s body was never found.
Three years later, Mei Yi still feels the pangs of grief caused by the sudden loss of her loved ones, but is slowly picking up the pieces for the sake of her surviving son, Luca, now aged nine.
“From the day of the crash, I was determined to make a life for Luca and myself. I’ve been dealt with lemons but I’m determined to make mojitos out of these lemons by setting a vision for what’s ahead and working very, very hard to achieve that positivity,” she says.
“There were days when I was just crying in bed. Time has helped, as has my psychiatrist, whom I started seeing about three weeks after the accident.”
“Now the pain comes and goes but I’ve learnt to deal with these grieving episodes, each time a little better, each time a little faster,” she says, adding that Luca, too, sees a counsellor.
