A Mother's Story (26 page)

Because that's what is scary too. The idea that with every day that passes, he dims a little in my memory. My recollection of events gets foggier. In fact, it is my greatest fear. That, one by one, the memories are going to fade and this most perfect creation of mine – this most wonderful light that I nurtured and gifted to the world – will be forever extinguished. And it terrifies me. Sometimes I even have the strange feeling that he was never here. Stop the clocks. Stop the clocks.

I am constantly being told – sometimes by complete strangers – how remarkable has been my strength in the face of
this tragedy, because apparently the ‘normal' reaction, whatever that is, is to be racked with bitterness and anger. But what kind of a way is that to lead a life? We are so used to people feeling that they need to hold on to their anger and be unforgiving, but that just slowly eats away at you. Being forgiving doesn't mean you accept what has been done to you, it just means you can let go of what has happened, because at the end of the day you cannot change it. The alternative, after all, is to be consumed with anger – and what purpose does that serve?

I don't know what the truth is, beyond finding a truth for yourself. Finding your own individual spiritual path. I've read quite a lot of Buddhist philosophy, and I think I have mixed some of that in with my Church of England and Catholic school upbringing to come up with my own unique blend of Rosie Batty life philosophy. And as for my spiritual beliefs – well, I believe in reincarnation. So if you opt out, you've only got to come back and repeat the life. You'll have to deal with it eventually.

We are all on a journey, and we all have things to learn. None of us knows what is around the corner, and it's what you learn from the experiences that life deals you that defines that journey. In my case, that's whether you gain wisdom and insight or whether you stay bitter and angry.

People ask me all the time: ‘What do you think about Greg?' And the truth is, I don't think about him much at all. I don't hate him. I just don't waste any time or energy thinking about him. I did have one conversation recently with his brother – he called me without realising it. It was one of those things where he had hit a wrong number in his phone, and I called him back without knowing who it was. We ended up speaking for a while, and I said how bad I felt for him and his mum and dad, because Greg's family has been inadvertently caught up in all of this too. It's not
their fault. They live in a small country town and they carry the stigma every day. I think they were selective about what they chose to be aware of with Greg and his behaviour, but Greg was their son and brother. No matter his crime, he was once a baby that his mother cradled. I know it cannot be easy for them.

One of the things I am proud of is being respectful towards Greg. There is nothing to be gained by defiling his memory. If I think anything at all about him, it's that he and I were both failed by the system. That whatever intervention occurred – from a law enforcement and mental health perspective – it was ultimately too little, too late. And so finally, I have come to accept there was nothing more I could have done to prevent Luke's death.

I had been through the courts, I had taken out the IVOs. I had exhausted all legal options and even considered running away to England. I tried to manage Greg myself, and when that failed, I got the law involved and did everything the police and courts subsequently told me to do, naïvely trusting that the system would protect me. That it would protect Luke. But we were both simply victims by association of someone's mental health problems. And there are a lot of people in that position today. They have a tormented journey with no respite – and that's a national tragedy.

That's where the coronial inquest was good for me, as taxing as it was. It set out in black and white the sequence of events that led up to Luke's death, and analysed the journey I had been on in the previous eleven years with Greg, and helped me come to understand that there was nothing more I could have done.

I have learned a lot since Luke was killed. I can see more clearly the trap I was in. Do I have regrets? Yes. Would I have done things differently a second time? Absolutely. Would things have turned out differently if I had? Maybe, maybe not.

You cling to the things that make living each day bearable. And for me, one of those things is the fact that Luke's murder was a premeditated act. It was Luke's last night of cricket training for the season. Greg didn't know when he would be seeing Luke again. He had emptied his bank accounts, packed up all his belongings at the share house. When he set out that afternoon for Tyabb oval, he had no intention of ever coming back. If I hadn't said yes to Luke spending five more minutes in the practice nets with his dad, I suspect it would have happened some other way, in some other place.

Whenever I thought about Luke being in danger in Greg's presence, especially since the knife incident, I had envisioned scenarios involving the two of them alone. Maybe he would drive off, put a hose from the exhaust pipe into the car and kill them both that way. That was why I'd fought so hard to restrict Greg's access to Luke in potentially dangerous situations. But it never occurred to me that he would kill Luke in the way he did. In broad daylight, in a public place, in front of mums, dads and kids. In front of me.

But I look back now and I can see that Greg had lost control over me and Luke was starting to pull away from him. To Greg's mind, I was winning. He killed Luke as the ultimate act of vengeance. He killed him so I would suffer for the rest of my life.

*

I've gotten past the deep, deep sadness – the trough that I was in for the first year after Luke's death. I'm no longer traumatised by what happened to Luke. The circumstances of his death, the meaninglessness and horror of it, no longer consume my every waking thought. And it did for that year, when it was hard to
simply get through every day. But I feel like now I have turned a corner.

Now, if I find myself getting melancholy, it's about what I was unable to give him. I'm sad about the life I wasn't able to offer him. I'm sad I wasn't able to build for him the close-knit nuclear family that I too had missed out on – and that I have spent a lifetime observing from afar and coveting. More than anything else, I wanted him to know the unconditional love of family. But at the end, and despite all my efforts, it was just him and me.

The real tragedy for me is that, despite appearances, I am not unusual. My situation, while extreme, has simply captured the national imagination because of the way I chose to react to it. For reasons I have yet to properly understand, I have garnered all this attention and won all these awards, but there are a hundred, maybe a thousand Rosie Battys out there right now. Women who are being terrorised by family violence, women who are victims of a partner's descent into mental illness. And the system is treating them in the same inadequate way that it treated me.

This is what spurs me on. This is the reason I get up out of bed every morning. I lost my son – my only son. And he was my reason for being. So now I have a choice. I either shrivel up and let his senseless death defeat me, or I stand up and use the platform I have been given to try to ensure no other woman in Australia suffers the same fate as me. Because no mother should have to feel this pain.

In May 2015, I was asked to take part in a Women of Letters event in Melbourne. The concept is simple. A group of women – of varying degrees of prominence or notoriety – are invited to an event at which they read out a letter they have written to a prearranged theme. I was invited to come along and read out ‘A Letter to the Me That Never Was'. This is what I wrote.

Dear Rosie,

     I write to you first of all as Rosie, the little girl that really was once upon a time, over forty-five years ago. The little girl growing up on a farm with two younger brothers and a dad that you loved but just didn't know how to get close to you. The dad who worked hard and read his newspapers but didn't know how to hug you, encourage you or tell you that he loved you.

     The little girl who was six years old, enjoying school and making new friends. Learning how to read, to add and subtract, and beginning to discover the bigger world
outside. The little girl whose life was turned upside down forever when her mummy died.

     The little girl who watched her mummy taken away on a stretcher, into the ambulance and never to be seen again. The little girl who didn't get to say goodbye, to hug her or to tell her that she will love her and remember her forever. The little girl who didn't even know that her mummy had died and wasn't at her funeral to share the grief and sadness with everyone else. The little girl who couldn't believe that it really was her mummy that had died, trying desperately to believe that they had mixed her mummy up with someone else and that she would return again one day – that is, until she saw with her own eyes that big black gravestone and knew she would never return again. Ever!

     And now I write to the ‘me that never was'. The me that never got the opportunity to know what it would have been like to have my mother be my best friend. To share my life through its ups and downs and to comfort and support me like other good mums do. And I don't doubt that my mum would have been my best friend and the best mother that I could have ever wished for.

     The ‘me that never was' who never got to see my mum become a grandmother, to grow old and to laugh and cry with. The mum that isn't here now when I need her the most. The mum that I never had time to get to know and only have distant, dim memories of. So the ‘me that never was' will never know how different my journey through life would have been if my mum had lived. If my world hadn't been shattered from that point on, and the fear and loneliness that crept into my life, separating me from everyone, would last forever.

     You see, I can't help but think that the ‘me that never was' would have been so very different if my mum had lived. If she had been there to nurture, protect and love me. To laugh at me. To laugh with me. To shout at me. To encourage me. To argue with me. To debate life with me. To be a part of my life that I could always trust and depend on, no matter what. To help me understand my emotions and teach me how to express them. To be there for me no matter what.

     You see, ‘the me that never was' could have made so many different choices if she hadn't died. Would I have been drawn into a pattern of unhealthy relationships with men? Men who drank too much, men who were weak and sucked my strength from me. Relationships that failed because I shouldn't have been in them to start with. You see ‘the me that never was' would have walked past those relationships and recognised that they were set to fail. The ‘me that never was' would have confidently aimed higher and been able to identify a partner who I could trust and see a future life together with.

     But you see if I had got to be ‘the me that never was', I wouldn't have met Greg. I would have walked away when I first saw the signs of abuse and violence. I would have run a mile in the opposite direction never to see him again. Because I deserved better!

     A man who couldn't hold down a job. A man who couldn't keep friends. A man who sabotaged every area of his life through his delusion and paranoia. That had no money and no prospects. A man who had spent twenty years repeating the same mistakes and never taking any responsibility for his own behaviour. Projecting blame
onto me and everyone else. Staying in total denial, never gaining wisdom or insight into his actions and the harm that he caused – no matter what challenges he had to face. I definitely deserved better.

     You see, because the ‘real' me, the little girl who ‘really' was, gained way more than her fair share of empathy, compassion and understanding because of losing her mum. These are great qualities and qualities to be proud of. But these very positive characteristics made way too many allowances, were way too forgiving and allowed way too many men over the years to hurt and disappoint me. But then if I hadn't met Greg, if I hadn't believed at some very early point in our relationship that I loved him and wanted to be with him, then I wouldn't have had Luke. So, now that I reflect, I'm glad that I lived the life I've lived and never was ‘the me that never was'. Because I had Luke.

Rosie

It's August 2015, and I am about to send this book to the printers. I'm at the end of another manic week that comes at the end of eight months of manic weeks.

Since I was named Australian of the Year in January, my life has been a whirlwind. I have travelled the length and breadth of this beautiful country and met many inspiring, wonderful people. I've spoken to gatherings everywhere, from small groups in country town halls to conferences of two thousand people. I've addressed everyone from nurses, midwives, teachers and students to legal professionals, judges, politicians and business leaders. I've given the keynote address at the National Press Club, appeared on the ABC TV program
Q&A
and undertaken more media interviews than I can count.

It has been incredibly rewarding, but sometimes I stop and wonder if I'm making a difference at all. Certainly, for all the support I have received – and it has been both immense
and
immensely gratifying – there have also been critics and detractors. I've become something of a lightning rod – an easy
target might be a better description. I understand that comes with the territory when you become a public figure, but it still hurts when people – sometimes in the public sphere – cast aspersions on my motivations and my integrity, despite knowing very little about me. That stings.

Over the last eighteen months or so I've also become a magnet for every woman who has ever suffered violence at the hands of her partner. Wherever I go, they come to me in waves, wanting to share with me the intimate details of the horrors they have endured. They need to talk, to confide in me. And often they are horrors they have never shared with another human being. I am now a psychologist-by-proxy to thousands of Australian women who feel I am giving voice to their silent suffering. They write me their stories in email and letters. And while it is humbling and their stoicism drives me on to make the most of this platform I have been given and effect real change, it also takes a toll. Because, invariably on my travels, I go back to a hotel room on my own where, after the applause has long since dissipated and the well-wishes of strangers have stopped echoing, it's just me and my thoughts.

It's a funny thing, this Australian of the Year award. While it's easily the greatest single honour I have received in my life, it's also an enormous burden. I feel a massive sense of responsibility to make it count, to use every second of my year in the spotlight.

And that can be exhausting, not least because it's a job that comes with no support staff, no monthly stipend nor even, for that matter, a rule book on how I should conduct myself. It's just me and my mobile phone and my personal email address and a daily tsunami of demands.

So there have been moments when I have felt completely overwhelmed and wondered if I have the energy to go on. But
that's always when the universe smiles. The gods of compassion always seem to find me when I am at my lowest and most exhausted. And that's invariably when I receive a letter like the one below.

Dear Rosie,

     I want to thank you for your bravery and commitment, even if thanking you for losing a child and rising above it just doesn't seem right …

     I also want to share a story with you. My nine-year-old son came home from school, telling me he had to do a project on his ‘hero'. At first, he mentioned Tim Cahill (he is a boy who loves his soccer), and so I asked him to go to the computer to see what information he could find and what aspect of that puts Tim into the ‘hero' status. After about ten minutes, my son returned and said, ‘Mum, I've decided Tim hasn't done anything heroic, but Rosie Batty has and I want my project to be on her.' My jaw fell to the floor – what nine-year-old boy gives up the opportunity to discuss a sporting person? I asked him what he knew about you and he said: ‘Well, her son was killed by his father when they were playing cricket and then she became Australian of the Year.' Google does provide children with so much …

     In any case, whilst he was amazed at your strength, I asked him exactly what it was that made you a ‘hero'. His response was quite simply that through your profound loss, you have created so much hope.

     I have attached his project to show you that you have reached the heart of a little boy, who idolises his parents, and thankfully lives in a safe and secure home. As much as
we all want to protect our children, you are right: domestic violence does occur everywhere. To create hope in the hearts of little people and victims is an immensely heroic thing to do, so THANK YOU.

So this is my promise to you, to Australia, to all the abused women and children out there. I might just be a suburban mum but I will keep talking out about this issue, for as long as I can, for as long as I'm asked to. I will keep showing up, and asking difficult questions, and challenging us, as a society, to do better. Because I can. And I know
we
can do better.

And my message to all Australians is to stand up and say no to family violence, wherever it is, whatever form it takes, whomever it affects. We need to pull together to overhaul our court system, our policing, our support services, education. We need to prevent family violence before it starts and name it, shame it and take immediate action when we see it. No ifs, no buts. Because our future, and our children's future depends on it.