A Mother's Story

by Rosie Batty

  At some point while I was giving my statement, displaying a kind of out-of-body composure in the face of events that should have rendered me speechless, Greg died on the emergency operating table. Doctors had tried to save him from the injuries sustained by the gunshot wounds, but they were unable to. A small mercy for all concerned.

  Early the next morning, I was dropped home in a police patrol car. Lee was awake, waiting for me to return. I floated in a kind of daze into the house and opened a bottle of wine. Lee looked at me as if to say, are you sure that’s a good idea? At this time of the morning? And I threw him back a look that said, I don’t give a fuck what time of the morning it is, I’m having a drink. I sat at the kitchen table with Natasha and Lee and, still in shock, we drank the bottle.

  I must have taken myself off to bed and fallen asleep at some stage. When I woke up, I was still in my clothes from the day before. I became aware that the house was filled with people. I came out of my bedroom, still dazed and confused. Silence fell as I walked into the room, my hair a mess, my clothes crumpled, my face puffy from crying. Someone offered me a cup of tea, another asked if I wanted something to eat. I batted them both away. I didn’t want anything. I curled up on the couch cuddling Luke’s SpongeBob SquarePants soft toy, half-listening to the hushed talk around me.

  Everyone was in shock, all speaking about how unexpected it was that Greg had killed Luke in such a violent way. And all I remember thinking was, well of course Luke had to die. As Greg’s world had continued to contract around him, as I had started to pull away from his influence and control, as Luke had begun to show signs of wanting to put some distance between himself and his father, there was never going to be any other outcome. Greg had killed Luke to make me suffer. It was his final act of control and power. While I had clung for so many years to a desperate belief that Greg would never hurt Luke, it was obvious to me now that there was no other possible outcome.

  At a certain point I tuned in to a conversation that a group of my friends were having about what to do about the media pack that had assembled outside my front gate. One of them volunteered to go out and tell them there was no comment to be made, that I just wanted to be left alone.

  And I remember sitting up and saying, ‘Hang on a minute. You’re trying to make decisions about what? On my behalf? Without me? No you’re not. If anyone is going to deal with the media it is me. This is happening to me. He was my son, this is my pain. I won’t have anyone speaking on my behalf.’

  The room was stunned into silence. It was only day one and people were already struggling to come to terms with my style of mourning. The tiptoeing around, the walking on eggshells: I knew it was well-meaning and I appreciated the concern, but I just wanted people to act normally around me. I craved conversation, even banter, not just respectful silence. This was my home, not a funeral parlour. I needed my friends to be friends. To cajole and make inappropriate jokes. To stop modifying their behaviour as if I had become a completely different person. I was more than aware of the tragedy that had befallen me. I didn’t need it amplified with cloying behaviour. It was my son who had been killed, so I would be the one to set the tone for how I would grieve that loss, not anyone else.

  And so, horrified at the thought that someone else would speak on my behalf, I went outside towards the waiting media pack. I had no idea what I was going to say. I was just determined to get out there and speak. I mean, what could possibly happen? It wasn’t as if the twenty journalists out there, with their cameras and notebooks and iPhone recorders, meant me any harm. I figured they had come all this way, they were out there trying to do their job, I would simply walk out and thank them for coming and tell them that I just needed to be left alone. My philosophy had always been, whether it was a colleague or a tradesperson who has come to fix something at your house, just let people do their job properly.

  I would learn months later that I had deviated from the playbook when it comes to these things, and that this split-second decision would set in train another series of events that would completely change my life. Apparently, accepted practice in these situations is for a member of the bereaved’s family to come out, make a statement and send the journalists back to their respective newsrooms.

  As I approached, cameras were pulled up onto shoulders, microphones were extended in expectation and notebooks were primed. What I didn’t know at the time was that none of the assembled reporters knew that I was Luke’s mother.

  As one of the reporters would later tell me, it was only as I started to speak that it began to dawn on them that I wasn’t a family representative, but in fact the mother who had just witnessed her son being murdered. I was too dazed and confused to really register any reaction among them, but people have told me the effect was electric.

  My friends started to walk towards me to try to form some sort of protective shield around me. But this was my journey, this was my pain. I had spent a lifetime standing on my own two feet, and that wasn’t about to change now. I hadn’t planned to say anything other than ‘thank you for coming’, but as I stood there, I felt the need to account for myself. Out of respect for Luke’s memory, I wanted them to know a little about his and my story.

  And so the words just started tumbling out.

  ‘No one loved Luke more than Greg,’ I began, fighting back tears. ‘No one loved Luke more than me. We both loved him. I did what I believed was in the best interests of Luke. He was a little boy in a growing body that felt pain and sadness and fear for his mum. And he always believed he would be safe with his dad. And he would have trusted Greg.

  ‘If anything comes out of this, I want it to be a lesson to everybody. Family violence happens to everybody, no matter how nice your house is or how intelligent you are. It happens to everyone. And this has been an eleven-year battle.’

  I finished speaking and everyone had fallen silent. I thanked the reporters for their understanding and turned to walk back inside. I had no idea what time of the day it was; I had no idea what I had said. All I remember thinking afterwards was: God, I hope I didn’t say something stupid.

  Looking back, I was clearly in shock. You’re in a state where you don’t really know what you are doing or why you are doing it. Those first few days were all a blur. I can’t remember the chronology of anything. Days turned into nights, and nights somehow turned back into days. I spent most of the time curled up on the couch hugging SpongeBob. I didn’t change my clothes for three days. People kept trying to get me to eat. I think I may have nibbled on a strawberry, but I wasn’t hungry. I don’t know why people feel the need to feed you at moments like that. The last thing you feel like doing is eating. It was not like I was going to starve. But I guess it gives them something to do. To make sure ‘you keep your strength up’ – even though you feel like there’s nothing in life worth keeping your strength up for.

  I would wake up and there would be people at the end of the couch, or sitting around my bed. Each time I came out to the living room, the house would be filled with more people and more flowers. And over the course of the next two or three days, I told and retold my version of events at Tyabb oval, probably just trying to make sense of it all myself.

  There were so many people at the house that my friend Molly went out and brought in one of those big hot-water urns, and someone else went out and bought a load of new coffee mugs, because I didn’t have enough. And everyone just came and went, to support me, to support each other.

  Somehow, and I don’t know how people knew, but they all got the message that I wanted people to come. If they were friends and they wanted to see me, or mourn Luke, I made it clear that they should feel free to come. And so they did. It was a stream of people. Anyone who knew me in any way, shape or form came. My friends were obviously there, but also people from the cricket club, representatives of the school, the local church, Luke’s AFL team. His death had touched people in a fundamental way: the flowers and tributes poured in as complete strangers mourned the death of a little boy they
didn’t know, but whose brutal passing had touched the humanity in all of us. Mourning the boy killed by his father at cricket practice, mourning for God only knows what personal tragedies his death had reminded them of.

  Lee had been to my doctor to get a script for painkillers, and when the thoughts in my head became too loud and the simple act of being awake proved too painful, I took them and fell into a fitful sleep. But there was no respite in sleep. I would dream of Luke. I would wake and wonder why his feet were not touching mine in the bed. And then it would hit me and I would wish I were dead. Death was preferable to enduring another waking hour knowing that I had lost my little boy for good.

  And then I received a call that someone needed to identify Luke’s body. Again, a host of friends stepped up, all offering to undertake the onerous task. But I was determined to do it myself. He was my son. I was his mother. I felt like it was my duty. As a parent sometimes you just have to step up to the plate and do the things that are tough. I had been there for him from the very beginning of his life, and I wasn’t about to abandon him now at the end of it.

  I asked my friend Jill to come with me to the morgue. Of all my friends, she was the most level-headed and sensible. I didn’t need histrionics, I just needed calm. And so we drove in to Melbourne together, located the morgue and went inside. After a series of formalities, we were led down a maze of corridors and into a dimly lit room. And there he was. He was just lying there, looking like he was asleep. It was my Luke, but it wasn’t him. There was a glass screen separating us. He was lying on his back so that I could see his face in profile. He had a white cloth around his neck. He didn’t look battered or bruised, as I had feared he might. There was no obvious sign of the trauma he had suffered to the back of his head. It was him, but without the essence of him.

  I remember talking to him, telling him how I would miss his spaghetti legs on me in bed. I sat in the half-light, telling him about the fuss that was being made over him, the flowers, the cards, the people who had come to the house to celebrate his life. I told him how his dog, Lily the golden retriever, was missing him, how she pined for one of his cuddles. I told him how the PlayStation hadn’t been turned on for days, and joked that it must be a new record. I told him how sorry I was. How, as his mother, I’d only had one job to do in life: to protect him. And how I had failed. And how I would have to live with that for the rest of my life.

  I talked to him for quite a bit, and I could have gone beyond the screen, but I didn’t. Because I would have been tempted to touch him. And I knew that if I did, he wouldn’t be Luke.

  I wanted to sit there and talk to him all day, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew I was going to have to muster the strength to leave. I took one last longing look at my little boy, then turned and walked out the door.

  26

  Saying Goodbye

  No mother should have to attend their own child’s funeral. It’s fundamentally wrong: a complete inversion of the natural order of things.

  The days that followed Luke’s death were a blur. I couldn’t tell you what happened on any particular day – I was barely aware if it was night or day. I floated through most of it buffeted by well-meaning family members and friends, and incapable of making a decision or much in the way of coherent thought.

  My family arrived from England and they stepped into the roles of protectors and providers, gracefully receiving the waves of visitors who continued to arrive while creating a protective cushion around me. All the people in the world who meant something to me had gathered because the one person in the world who meant the most to me wasn’t there anymore. Faces I hadn’t seen for years appeared on my doorstep. The natural instinct was to be pleased to see them, to want to catch up – but I was barely lucid for most of that time. Or if I was, it was only in bursts, before the grief would rise up and engulf me all over again.

  Thankfully, the school stepped in to start organising the funeral, which was a godsend. I had neither the capacity nor inclination to do it myself. The funeral planners came to the house and, in that softly spoken way they have, ensured my input into the funeral arrangements was relatively painless. Nothing was too much trouble; everything I suggested was a good idea. We talked about yellow being Luke’s favourite colour, and Mick the funeral parlour man told me that a yellow coffin was absolutely doable.

  ‘A bright yellow coffin?’ I asked, hardly believing it.

  ‘As bright as you want it to be, Rosie,’ Mick replied. And I remember thinking, Luke would be pleased with this.

  Then Mick asked me if there was anything of Luke’s I might want to him to wear – and I didn’t hesitate. Since he had been given an animal-themed onesie for his eleventh birthday, barely a day had passed when he hadn’t worn it. He loved that thing. There was no other choice, so I went and grabbed it. And because I didn’t want my boy to be in there alone, I gave Mick one of Luke’s SpongeBob soft toys to go in the coffin with him.

  Talk turned to music: specifically, which songs I wanted played. It seemed like an odd conversation to be having: what one song can possibly encapsulate a life? Capture a mood? And so I resorted to the songs I had chosen to be played at my own funeral, years before, when I had written out a will. Because it was always going to be me, not Luke, for whom music was going to be played at a funeral.

  ‘Amazing Grace’ was an easy choice. It was my dad’s favourite hymn and had always held a special place in my heart too. Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ would, I thought, capture something of the innocence and wonder that I felt Luke represented. There was a poignancy to it that I knew would form the perfect musical soundscape to the montage of photos that was being prepared. And finally – in a complete rejection of convention – the Bruce Springsteen version of the Beatles classic ‘Twist and Shout’. It was easily my favourite song in the world. I had seen Springsteen perform it in England when I was younger and it had stayed with me. And while I felt that it was the song I wanted to play at Luke’s funeral, it didn’t seem proper somehow.

  I looked sheepishly at Mick. ‘That’s maybe not appropriate, is it?’

  ‘Why not have it on the way out, as we’re walking out of the church?’ he replied. And it seemed like a good idea. It was to be a celebration of Luke’s life, after all.

  A day or so later, some people came from the funeral home to collect photos to create a montage to play at the funeral. I had forgotten they were coming. There were so many people in the house, I had barely had a second to myself. I was momentarily thrown: suddenly possessed with the importance of this task, wanting to get it right, annoyed with myself for forgetting, panicked that I would choose the wrong selection of photos, stressed with all of the people in my house: people whom five minutes before I had been thanking for being there to support and care for me. The only constant in those days after Luke’s death was my inconstancy. My moods swung, my patience with people ebbed and flowed, my forbearance wavered. But people were kind and patient with me. I was the bereaved mother.

  I scrambled through old photos of Luke, curating a selection that I thought would best represent his life. And I began to worry I wasn’t going to get the mix right, that this was somehow going to be a letdown for Luke. It was his day, after all. But finally, I realised that it didn’t matter. Whichever photos they took, whichever they chose to use, they would all end up painting the same picture – a portrait of a beautiful boy gone too soon.

  The administrators at Flinders College, who were doing everything they could to help, had taken charge of organising all of the logistics. They had suggested using the school chapel for the funeral service itself – accessed only by family and close friends – and opening up the school gym for members of the community and public who otherwise wanted to pay their respects. I had no idea how many people would come. I was already overwhelmed by the number of friends and family who had descended – my brain honestly didn’t have room to consider that their ranks would be bolstered significantly by people I only vaguely knew or didn’t know
at all.

  The school undertook to liaise with the funeral parlour so I didn’t need to get involved, and even managed the media interest. Again, because I had been in my bubble since Luke’s death, I had no idea the nerve it had touched around the country. Since my impromptu appearance for the TV cameras the morning after Luke’s death, friends had worked assiduously to shield me from the subsequent barrage of media requests. I had unwittingly created national interest in my son’s death, and consequently his funeral was going to be big news.

  I remember waking up that morning and thinking, I don’t know how I am going to get through today. But I know I have to. I have to survive today and I want to absorb and remember this day in its entirety. This is Luke’s day. This is his funeral. And I felt that if I let myself go, if I let emotion overwhelm me, I would never collect myself again; I had to get into a zone and stay in that zone, because I wanted to share this day, I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to be able to remember and embrace it.

  The house was full of my immediate family: Josephine’s friends and family from New Zealand and my immediate family from the UK had all assembled. Everybody wore yellow. My brothers went out and each bought a yellow tie and I borrowed a yellow jacket. Everyone had a splash of yellow. We looked at the meaning of the colour yellow and it was so poignant – joy, happiness, intellect and energy. It was so special and so right.

  As the hour of the funeral approached and we all gathered in the living room, there was a sense that we were all steeling ourselves to face an ordeal. We all knew what we had to do and we prepared ourselves to do it. The British stoicism seemed to kick in. The stiff upper lip. The determination to get the job done and not let the emotion of the moment overwhelm us. To break down would have been to let down the side.

  A limousine came to collect us and we all travelled in it together, down the hill to Flinders College. It was a damp morning – grey and drizzly. I remember pulling in to the school and seeing all these people walking across the grounds. There were cars parked all up the street, just waves and waves of people making their way solemnly to the school gym. And I didn’t properly register how many people there were, because I was so focused on maintaining composure, but I had a sense of this great body of people already assembled in the gym and scores of people still walking across the oval – all wearing a yellow ribbon, a yellow shirt, a yellow scarf.