Mark Story: Circle of life halted for fateful day

Something unprecedented transpired in the newsroom on New Year's Eve: No death notices came in.

Hence on New Year's Day they didn't feature in the usual spot on the paper's penultimate page.

None of us had encountered it before. Indeed a long-time newsman and colleague from Auckland said it was a once-in-a-career anomaly, the likes of which he'd not seen in any newspaper on his extensive watch.

In a plot twist, things got even more unearthly.

We put in our usual first-day-of-the-year call to the Hawke's Bay District Health Board to inquire as to the region's first baby for 2016, only to be told (at that time) there had been no births.

No deaths, no births.

Nothing fatal, nothing natal.

We'd stepped inside a M Night Shyamalan film. Had the Bay's population remained, for a day, static at 151,179?

Fleetingly at least, there was something supernatural in the ether. Whatever it was, the hiatus would give cause to a rather poignant, existential pause.

Until, of course, death notices the following day proved there were at least two who had sadly succumbed to the unforgiving minute in the final act of 2015. Additionally, the DHB later confirmed at 4.35pm on New Year's Day, Kortearz TJ Williams-Eyles' birth earned him first place for the region in 2016.

But ever thus are the vagaries of life, not to mention the nature of a newsroom.

Condolences to those who lost loved ones during the usually festive season and our congratulations to the Williams-Eyles family.

The comings and goings remind us the circle of life never really stops, not even on the recalibration of a new year.