His life has been marred in tragedy. Stuart Diver lost his first wife in a tragic landslide, his second one to cancer.
Now almost 21 years after the Thredbo disaster Diver has opened up about learning to stay positive in the face of a double dose of grief, while raising his daughter alone.
He says his life is overwhelmingly positive, a fact he knows others would find weird considering he has lost both the women he loved.
‘Both Sally and Rosanna added such an enormous amount to my life that it would be sad for me to live as positively as I can in their memory,’ he writes in the Sunday Telegraph.
Stuart Diver being pulled from the rubble after the 1997 Thredbo disaster that killed 18 people including his first wife Sally
Diver with his daughter Alessia who he had with his second wife Rosanna
After the loss of his second wife, Rossanna Cossettini, grief threatened to swallow Diver. But had to go on for the sake of their daughter, Alessia
Being a single father is tough but the pair have carved out a life for themselves, with Diver providing as much as possible.
‘My daughter Alessia calls me both her mum and her dad. She’s seven now, but she lost her mum when she was four and a half, so I spend a lot of time making sure that Rosanna never gets forgotten.’
His greatest success he says was not his survival in the landslide but bringing up his daughter.
The ski instructor was the only person to emerge alive from the rubble when 100 tones of earth liquefied and crushed two ski lodges in a landslide at the popular NSW resort in July 1997.
Witnesses said it sounded like a freight train, or an explosion. Then dead silence settled over the rubble.
Diver and his second wife Rosanna (left) who died from breast cancer shortly after thier daughter was born
He says their daughter calls him both mum and dad as the two of them have carved out a life together despite the loss of Rosanna
After 68 hours, Diver was pulled from the wreckage – 18 people including his wife Sally had died trapped inside.
Two years after the landslide Diver, who was still working on the mountain when he met Rossanna and found love again.
The couple built a life together on the slope, three years later they married and planned a family.
But just as their lives were coming together Rosanna was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Stuart Diver with his first wife, Sally (pictured) who died in the landslide
Diver first came to prominence as a result of his remarkable survival, pulled out of the rubble on August 2 1997, some 65 hours after a landslide wrought havoc across Thredbo
The couple maximised every moment together and after one miscarriage gave birth to baby Alessia.
Shortly after her birth Rosanna passed away, leaving Diver too bring up their daughter alone.
He pushed through the grief of loosing both women he loved to raise their daughter. She needed a father and he needed a reason to go on.
He raised her on the same mountain that threatened to kill him twenty 21 years ago, but says it helps keep the memory of her mum alive.
‘Each year, on the anniversary of Rosanna’s death, Alessia and I go to our favourite spot in Thredbo and spread some of her ashes in the creek. Every time we throw a handful of ashes, we say what our favourite memory of Rosanna is.’
He told 60 Minutes last year that the hardest thing he ever did was grieve for Rosanna while she was still alive.
The disaster killed his then wife Sally and 17 others. Two years later he met his now-wife Rosanna who helped him with his enormous grief
‘It was one of the hardest things that we did — pre-grieving. Which is a really difficult thing to do, especially when you don’t know when the person is going to die. That’s one of the hardest things with cancer.’
Its not just the mountain that holds memories of Rosanna. Diver makes sure they still cook her favourite food and look over her favourite possessions, like the dresses she wore and the jewellery she loved.
Diver is concentrating on raising a resilient and independent woman. He says when you’re given the choice, you’ve got to choose life.
‘I mean you can sit here and be miserable and you know say ‘poor me, look what I’ve been through’. But at some point you have to make a decision ‘I’m going to live life’,’.