I'm still in denial, says grieving Thorne

Grahame Thorne says 'it's just so unfair' that Bruce was killed. Photo / Christchurch Star

It is a month since he lost his son, and former All Black and MP Grahame Thorne is still in denial.

Having already struggled with the reality of his son David never being the same after a stroke, Mr Thorne cannot come to grips with the death of beloved older son Bruce in a car accident in South Africa on Christmas Eve.

"I don't know who we pissed off, but we've pissed them off in spades. It's just so unfair when you see all these arse***** who live to be 80, and Brucey, who had touched so many lives, gets taken," he told the Herald from his home near Queenstown.

"People react in different ways. I'm still in denial. I just see him everywhere. No one can believe he is gone.

"I don't know what can happen now. What else can happen to us?"

A former Super 12 rugby player, Bruce Thorne, 38, was driving with his wife, Siobhan, and 13-month-old son, Benjamin, at Kroonstad, about 200km south of Johannesburg, when he lost control and their vehicle hit a culvert and spun three times.

"Because he was six foot six, his head hit the top of the cab and [it] basically scalped him, and he fell across his wife and died in her arms about 30 seconds later," Mr Thorne said.

Benjamin was unhurt, but Siobhan is recovering from a broken elbow and bones shattered in both hands.

"She can't even hold the baby. She can hardly get in the car now."

Mr Thorne missed most of Bruce's childhood after his mother took him with her back to South Africa when he was 3. But since reuniting when Bruce was a teen, they had became very close.

With his daughter Hannah, Mr Thorne travelled to South Africa for the funeral, only to find their bags had been misdirected.

"So I actually wore Bruce's shoes and socks [to the funeral]. I stuffed Bruce's shoes full of toilet paper because he takes size 13, and I'm only 11 ... so I'm walking to the chapel and the paper is coming out of the holes in his shoes.

"I've never seen so many grown men cry at a funeral. And they all remembered when they met him, and they all remembered how much he inputed into their lives."

David, who suffered a stroke at 20 after being tackled heavily during a club rugby match in 2006, was doing okay, Mr Thorne said.

"His vocabulary is still about 12 words. He doesn't do much, he works a bit around our property here. If you didn't know him, you wouldn't know there was anything wrong with him from a distance. But when you scratch the surface you see ... he has problems picking stuff up, because he hasn't got the strength in his right arm.

"If something happened to us, I don't know what will happen ... He's not dead, and we have to be thankful for small mercies."

Calls and emails are still coming in from people returning from holidays and getting news of Bruce's death. "You don't realise I think, until something happens to you, how many people love you."