The Road Ahead: 'What two more years of life could mean'

“I used to reflect on ‘what does two years mean to me?’ It’s seeing my son become a teenager, it’s seeing my daughter graduate, it might be mokopuna, grandchildren, arriving … birthdays or these special milestones that you take for granted in your life.” Life has gone on. Initially, every milestone was celebrated as if it might be the last. “It’s really hard to live in a heightened state like that. So we make those moments really count. It’s taking those moments along on the journey, not trying to keep kind of operating at this level of, ‘what if I died tomorrow’.”

As New Zealand prepares for an historic election in the worldwide grip of Covid-19, reporter David Fisher and visual journalist Mike Scott spent three weeks on the road to find out what we’re thinking. They met Wiki Mulholland, who is battling breast cancer, and the family of Paula Kirkwood, who succumbed to bowel cancer last year.