A Mother's Story

by Rosie Batty

  As I walked into the chapel, I saw the coffin and had to steady myself. There he was, my little boy. The bright yellow coffin, crowned by a spray of yellow roses and gerberas arranged in the shape of a cross. Atop the coffin was one of Luke’s large SpongeBob plush toys, and a beautiful portrait of my Luke, the one we’d had taken only a year earlier. Professionally lit and effortlessly handsome, he smiled out at the congregation. I put my head down and made my way to my seat at the front of the chapel.

  As we waited for the service to start, I knew I needed to look anywhere but at that coffin if I wanted to keep it together. And so I craned my neck to take in the congregation. The chapel was packed. There were people there from far and wide. People I hadn’t seen in years. People I had no idea had even known about Luke’s death much less known they were going to make the journey to his funeral. There were friends from Darwin, friends from Sydney. I saw friends who lived on the Gold Coast, friends from Queensland. People had come from everywhere to be there for Luke. People from my past, people I’d worked with twenty-odd years ago, people I had only had the briefest of associations with. I didn’t get a chance to speak to all of them but I saw them all, I noted their presence and it gave me enormous strength. There were neighbours, cricket mums, Scouts dads and, of course, Luke’s friends. The whole school was present in the school gym, mostly in the company of their parents, alongside a good proportion of the greater Tyabb community. Some people had driven for hours, from the other side of Melbourne. They had never met me or Luke, they had never before been to Tyabb. But for that morning, they were connected to this community, shaken by the senseless death of a little boy at cricket practice.

  My friend Kirsty, who plays with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, had flown down to play a piece on her violin at the funeral. She composed herself, looked at me and smiled then began to play Jules Massenet’s ‘Méditation de Thaïs’. Notes from a single violin wafted out over the congregation – not too forlorn but appropriately melancholy. It was a beautiful, special moment.

  The pastor, a man called David who had been recommended to me, led the service and hit all the right notes himself. It was a perfectly balanced ceremony: with enough of a religious overtone to suit the surroundings, but not so much that it became overbearing. After years of being exposed to Greg’s extreme religious convictions, Luke had developed his own relationship with God. He had believed in God, and spirituality had been an important part of his life. It seemed appropriate that God figured prominently in his funeral. Josephine had suggested including the poem ‘Reason, Season, Lifetime’ in the funeral booklet, and I found myself focusing on it as David spoke.

  Somehow – and I don’t know how – I was able to stay composed. It wasn’t easy but I did feel that huge need to stay in control of myself, because I really did want to be able to look back and know that I was present, that I was fully there, that I absorbed every single moment of that day. I came close to losing it completely when the first bars of ‘Amazing Grace’ were struck. I felt a wave rising in me, a wave I knew would drown me completely if I allowed it to crash, and so I pushed it down. Inside, I was howling – wrenched apart with pain. On the outside, I maintained composure. I held it together for Luke.

  Josephine took to the lectern and spoke beautifully; my brother Terry did too. I got up and read Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’, the same psalm that had been read at my mother’s funeral. It was important to me that my parents contributed to the funeral proceedings; I wanted them to feel that they had a voice too. It was their goodbye to their grandson as much as it was my farewell to my son.

  Matthew, my friend Leonie’s husband, spoke brilliantly. The school principal gave a moving speech. The school made a video of the ceremony, something I have never watched. Perhaps one day I will. One of the teachers photographed the entire funeral and put together a beautiful album. At first I thought it was a macabre memento but I’ve since come to appreciate it as a sensitive record of this most important occasion.

  By the time we stepped out of the chapel, it was as if we had been transported to a completely different day. The grey clouds and drizzle had given way to blazing sunshine. Luke’s coffin was carried from the chapel by his uncles and our neighbour Chris. I walked in step behind them, reaching my arm up to touch the coffin as it went. I don’t know why. I just felt this urge to touch Luke – to make sure he knew I was with him.

  And then there were the moments where I felt like it wasn’t happening. That this couldn’t be happening. Surely this was some sort of silly nightmare from which I would wake in a cold sweat. No mother should have to say goodbye to her eleven-year-old boy forever. It didn’t seem possible to me that Luke – my Luke – was really in that yellow coffin. My little boy, wearing his onesie, clutching SpongeBob – being carried aloft by his uncles on the way to being cremated.

  We got into the car and followed the hearse as it wound its way steadily towards the crematorium. As we drove, my family made small talk around me as I just focused on Luke’s coffin up ahead. SpongeBob smiled goofily out the back window at me, and it made me smile. It seemed so appropriate, because it was just a little boy in there, a gorgeous little boy who still enjoyed SpongeBob and hadn’t properly left his childhood behind. Upon arriving at the crematorium we were ushered into a little chapel and invited to say our final goodbyes. I had said a hundred final goodbyes at this point and was determined not to be overcome by the emotion of this moment. And so I approached the coffin, laid my hand gently on it, closed my eyes and said a silent farewell. A brief ceremony was held, none of which I remember. It was just immediate family and some very close friends. We were asked if we wanted to say anything and there was silence. There was so much to say, but no one felt able to speak. Finally, I spoke. I don’t remember a word of what I said: just a simple goodbye to my son. And a reminder that I loved him more than life itself.

  I couldn’t stand and watch the coffin disappear behind the curtains. It was too painful to even contemplate. And so, as I had done in the morgue only days before, I took a deep breath, turned and walked out.

  The wake was held at the Tyabb Cricket Club. The club had kindly given over the premises for the occasion, and it could not have been more perfect. Everyone was there. People from the local community, all the friends and family who had travelled from far and wide. The sun was belting down and people spilled out from the clubhouse and onto the oval itself. Local cafés and restaurants had donated all the food, a brewery had donated kegs of beer and Mornington Peninsula vineyards supplied wine. The generosity was overwhelming. I remember feeling so touched and thinking, how can I ever repay these people? How can I ever repay them for what they’re doing for me and Luke today and have done since his death?

  To this day, I still don’t know how it all came together – who had organised it, which people had driven it – because I still wasn’t in a place to really take it all in. It all just happened. The mood was, if not ebullient, at least upbeat. Luke had touched so many people in his short life, this was a celebration of him. It was a cleansing of this place too, of sorts. A reclaiming of it from the horrible cloud that hung over it.

  I remember having so many people come to me to talk that I never got into the clubroom. I know there was no point at which I didn’t have a glass in my hand. And I didn’t get around to speak to everyone, because it all happened in such a blur, but I noted all of the people who had come from far and wide and will be forever grateful to them for their support.

  In the weeks immediately following Luke’s death, I was inundated with flowers and cards from people all over the country. People I had never met before but were moved by mine and Luke’s story to send flowers, a note or a sympathy card. Every day for weeks I would get huge piles of cards in the mail. Some were addressed to ‘Rosie, c/- Tyabb Cricket Ground’, others to ‘Rosie, Flinders College’ and many still bore the simple address of ‘Rosie, Tyabb’. Every single one of them reached me. As did the hundreds of bouquets of flowers, some from the top
local florists, others hand-cut and hand-delivered. More flowers than I had space to accommodate. There were flowers on the back patio, the front patio, all over the house. And more cards than I could read. I used to scoop them up and put them in a special basket that someone had given me expressly for that purpose.

  In the fullness of time, I would sit down and open and read each card. Beautiful poems, heartfelt messages of sympathy, complete strangers pouring out their hearts, writing lengthy letters about how deeply affected they had been by Luke’s death and my apparent stoicism in the face of it. If only they had seen me behind closed doors. I tried my best to send a personal, handwritten reply to each card and bouquet of flowers I received. I just felt such an enormous debt of gratitude. I wanted everyone who had reached out to me to know that I didn’t take any of their kindness for granted. Even now I still feel that I haven’t told enough people how much I appreciated what they did. That I’ve missed people out who I should never have missed out. That I still need to thank every single person even if I don’t know who they are because every single one of their gestures, no matter how large or small, made the world of difference to me.

  At some point during Luke’s wake, I became aware that numbers were thinning, and I became aware that the junior players were arriving to start their regular, scheduled cricket practice. And I took a moment to stand and watch quietly as training began. And while it could have triggered a rush of negative emotion, I derived a sort of comfort from it. Comfort that this summer ritual continued. It was a perfect summer’s evening on a nondescript oval in a tiny corner of this sprawling country, and cricket practice was underway. Just as it would be underway on countless other ovals in countless other towns all over the country. And I felt happy that people were getting on, that normal service was being resumed, that despite the fact my world had been shattered irreparably, everyone else’s was continuing to turn. There was, oddly, a sense of comfort in the constancy of it all.

  It was now early evening and as I looked around, I noticed my family had all retreated home, as had the New Zealand contingent. Even Rosemary, a friend of mine from Sydney who had come down expressly for the funeral and was staying at my house, had headed back with them. A core group of my Tyabb friends were settling in, and it was only when Rosemary came back to the clubhouse to find me that I realised I ought to head home. It wasn’t fair to leave her to deal with the extended Batty clan on her own.

  So I gathered together a handful of friends and we went back to my house, where we carried on drinking and sharing stories. Evening turned to night and one by one, people left. Rosemary excused herself, saying she had an early flight the next morning, and went to my room to go to sleep. I sat up talking with my brothers, all of us becoming increasingly loud and unintentionally belligerent.

  And I guess there was a point where we had been talking and emotions had been stirred up, and I remember being really upset and angry and shouting at them. All of a sudden my dad came storming out from his bedroom, telling us all to get to bed. We were suddenly five years old again, shrinking from his raised voice and skulking off to our rooms.

  After a day spent holding it in, my outburst with my brothers had been little more than a release. An irrational emotional response to an imagined slight over which I ultimately had no control. And so I crawled into bed after everyone had gone to sleep. I had just buried my son. I had just experienced my own son’s funeral. And I felt so desperately alone, so desperately alone. I didn’t know what to do with myself here alone in the dark, finally unable to keep it all at bay. No more distractions, no more people, no more events. Just me and the darkness.

  And my friend Rosemary had anticipated this. That’s why she had come from Sydney and offered to sleep in my bed. Because when everyone else had gone to sleep, she was with me on the night of my son’s funeral, and she held me while I sobbed. We went to sleep holding hands. That closeness I’ll never forget of being with someone rather than having to be alone – that was special.

  27

  Change

  When I reflect on the last eighteen months of my life, I’m struck by what a remarkable ride it has been. In a short space of time I’ve become a household name. Rare is the occasion I can walk through an airport these days and not be stopped by a complete stranger. Sometimes – and disconcertingly – they will ask for an autograph, while other times they will excuse themselves for approaching me and tell me how much they admire me. Other times still they will ask me for a hug, or use the occasion to tell me about their own experience as victims of family violence.

  I have become a lightning rod for people and their myriad problems. And I don’t say that with anything other than the utmost humility. It is humbling in the extreme to have people entrust you with their darkest stories. It also takes a toll.

  In the year and a half since Luke died, I’ve been named Australian of the Year and feted by a prime minister. I’ve been indirectly responsible for the establishment of a royal commission in Victoria into family violence. I have been appointed co-deputy chair of the Council of Australian Governments’ advisory panel on family violence. I have spoken to the country’s top CEOs, addressed the National Press Club and met people from all over the country at speaking engagements that have taken me from far north Queensland to suburban Perth. I’ve lost count of the number of media interviews I have done. From Four Corners to The Today Show, from stories by Helen Garner in The Monthly to appearing on the cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly. It’s been a tumultuous, extraordinary, slightly surreal time.

  I have a kind of fame – but for all the wrong reasons. I am a strange sort of celebrity – but because of how I got here, it’s a celebrity status that nobody wants.

  I am the person that no one says no to. I am the bereaved mother whom everyone indulges, because there but for the grace of God go us all. I was a mum in middle-class suburbia, in a nice house, raising a little boy at a nice school. I was everyone and no one. And now I’m Rosie Batty. No one would swap places with me for even a second. People sometimes talk about how strong I am. How brave. I’m not sure about that. I don’t see myself that way. All I can do is go forward. This is the journey I am on. This is the direction I have decided to take my life in. I no longer have a son to live for, and so I fill my life with creating a legacy for Luke.

  I was a mum, that was my meaning and purpose. That’s why I did everything. Chose a lovely school, a lovely neighbourhood, made sure that Luke had great male role models in his life, made sure he explored every opportunity he wanted to in terms of team sports, Scouts, swimming and drama. I just wanted him to be happy – to try to make up for the black cloud hovering over us that was Greg.

  Anyone who is a parent knows you get up in the morning, you go to work, you do all the things you do because you want your kids to have a good life. But my boy has gone now, and I don’t have a job to go to. So I have to replace that absence with another reason to get up in the morning, to fill my time with being busy with things that mean something. I have a different purpose now. I may only make a little difference, but a little difference is a start.

  When I stood on the podium in front of Parliament House in Canberra to accept the award of Australian of the Year, I dedicated it to Luke. Because everything I do is for him. So that I don’t forget him. So that his eleven years in my life – on this planet – will count for something. So that no other mother has to suffer the same fate as me.

  Am I deliberately keeping busy to keep the grief at bay? Perhaps. Am I terrified that when my tenure as Australian of the Year finishes, the phone calls will stop, the speaking invitations will dry up and the doors that have hitherto flung open whenever I knocked will remain stubbornly shut? Most definitely. But in the meantime, I feel like I have found my calling. Out of the most tragic event imaginable, I have found purpose. And if people want to think that makes me a bad person or some kind of oddball, then there’s not a lot I can do to change their minds.

  Part of the reason I think I seem t
o cope far better than people expect – and far better than I ever would have expected I could – is because I have this new sense of purpose in my life. If, by raising community awareness of family violence – and getting men to recognise that this is a very basic issue of gender inequality – I manage to help one woman, then it will have been worthwhile. If I serve as inspiration for only one victim of family violence to summon the strength to call a crisis line and take steps to remedy her situation, then I will have achieved all I set out to do.

  Of course, if, along the way, I also play a part in changing legislation or shifting societal attitudes towards family violence, or thoroughly reviewing the way we fund and support frontline family-violence service providers – from emergency shelters to counselling services – then that is a good thing too. Because it is fundamentally unacceptable that we can’t live in our own homes safely, that people who are close to us can terrorise us and make our lives miserable and we are not doing enough about it. I hope I have forced that uncomfortable truth out into the open.

  For you only have to consider the statistics to understand what a pressing problem family violence is for this country. One woman almost every week dies at the hand of a current or former partner. One in six women will be a victim of family violence in their lifetime. And of these one in six, at least half of them have children in their care. If we had one woman a week dying on the public transport system, we would be up in arms – so why aren’t we similarly horrified about family violence deaths? Is it simply because they go unreported? Largely overlooked by law enforcement, widely dismissed by our judicial system and routinely written off by our media as ‘just another domestic’?