'She's completely destroyed': Terror attack widow's life in limbo after losing husband

The walls are mended, the floors have been cleaned; people are putting March 15 behind them, but Manal Dokhan is still there.

"Still, I can't sleep, maybe two-three hours. And yesterday I asked, 'Where's my husband?'" she told The Project.

This grief is raw - her husband was Manal's whole life.

"My husband was everything for me," she said.

Manal's brother, Bader, said her husband was "a truly good man".

"Life will not get back as before, she's completely destroyed, she now feels she has nothing," Bader said.

"The name Mohsen in arabic means 'good man'. You feel a kindness and warmth from his soul when you were sitting in a room with him."

Mohsen Al-harbi initially survived the shooting. Manal raced to Al Noor Mosque, then to Christchurch Hospital, but he died there.

Overwhelmed by the horror of it, Manal's grief triggered a heart attack.

"I felt heavy in my chest, I couldn't talk with any people then," she said.

She was hospitalised for two weeks

"My heart, I felt my heart was very heavy."

"I couldn't believe [it], and I didn't like to have any friends to visit and say about my husband."

Mohsen and Manal met seven years ago and it's been just the two of them. This year was going to be a new beginning - they planned to start a family.

"But everything changed, now my life changed, upside down," she said.

The plan now is to just get through each day. But she can't face going anywhere - not the mosque, not to her friend's home - nowhere that reminds her of Mohsen.

"My friends invited me, I said 'please, not now - I can't now'."

To help, Manal's family have now moved to Christchurch.

"I can't live alone now, I can't - I can't - or sit alone, I can't," she said.

"I thank my dad, my family with me now, my mum, my brother, my nephews, now every day my nephew sit with me, and [we] play together."

Manal's is a life in limbo. She's in temporary accommodation, but her brother is working to find her a home of her own.

That will bring much needed stability so she too can finally start to mend.

The Project.