Memory Loss
Without Prejudice
I took a trip to Queensland about 4 months after Lauren died. Persuading The Frouds, to let me take Kerry, Lauren's best friend and I don't remember anything about it. I know I was there, photos show I was there but it is gone to me.
Lost in time amd memory, if I look at the photos really hard, I sort of vaguely remember being there but no details emerge. Nothing, zilch, nada. I can see the dress I was wearing and shudder when I remember it. I never wore it again, for some reason.
I was a mad woman, lost in grief and confusion, I talked, I ate, I walked and slept and responded to people and I remember nothing. Gayle, Kerry's mum, reminding me of her recollection as Kerry and I emerged from the coach. She remembers B's annoyance at having to wait as the coach was delayed.
He was beside himself, muttering and complaining loudly, pacing up and down, agitated, swearing and making a compete dick of himself. Gayle grew tired of his antics. Thinking of me and Kerry and our pain, while he whinged and complained.
She remembered Deb, saying they the Frouds were pretty relaxed in their home,
"I wouldn't dare be like that around my Dad", Deb had said, "He's very strict"
He was more a controller I think and when he lost that control he went nuts.
But back to the trip....
I know I was there and I know I was there for Tassie earlier in the year, B and I blurting out our daughter had just died and there was no more conversation. People avoided us and I wondered what we were doing there. But it was painful to stay home, it was painful everywhere.
But of the Queensland trip I don't remember one detail, not one, weird.
I had tried goimg back to uni that year and had to leave, all I wanted to do was pine for my child and I wanted to hide, like a wounded animal. I conversed only with the girls and renovated the house. I just worked and worked, tiling and ripping wallpaper off and as I did, I realised nothing was mine.
I had picked out nothing in this house of horrors, nothing, not a curtain, nor wallpaper, nor paint, nor furniture, nor my clothes, shoes. Nothing said me, it all said B. So I changed it. Little Miss Rosie the Riveter, Miss Independent, and when a male friend called around and said,
"Girl, what are you doing?"
I was balanced on a ladder in a corner of the living room, painting, no fire on, middle of Winter, freezing cold. On my own, and everything felt grey, just grey, but I kept on working through it. Seeing my counsellers twice, three times a week. and pining for my child, just drooping.
I retiled the bathroom, had the kitchen re floored, I ripped up rotten floor boards and the smell of mould was enough to make you pass out. I had the roof repointed, knowing that we would sell, eventually but being stable was important for 12 months, the counsellers told me.
We had enough to deal with so keeping everything in balance was important. And we managed to do that, by focusing on Kyle, the baby, and he thought for years he had five Mothers.
I refused to go back to the business with B. after I had asked him to leave for the final time. And I began work elsewhere after the Inquest. The inquest was awful and photographers took our photos, while we tried to wave them away.
I had picked Yvette up that morning from hospital as she had a miscarriage. And people were crowding us and trying to get a good shot for the paper, the grieving family, who wants to see that?. People's pain.??
And we saw Tanya for the first time, her looming large in our imagination and she was just a tiny frightened 12 year old in school uniform. Crying, at what had happened.
Her Father being told off by the Coroner, Graeme Johnston, Castigating the man for leaving the two 12 year old girls on their own.
The Security Company Man cried too and said they had not done their job and the Company had gone out of business.
And I was called up, to say yes she was a good girl and yes it was out of character for her and all I could think of was that none of this was going to help.
Lauren was dead and no amount of crying or wishing or pleading with God was going to change it. There could be no pointing of fingers as it was a chain of events that went terrribly wrong, an accident, a tragic accident.
And I clung to that, and decided to go back to work and did. Not for B, but a new fresh company, with new faces and lots of work, the great distractor.
And met someone I eventually went out with and moved on slowly, slowly. The grief still there but more manageable.
And the Coroner saved his last castigation to Springvale Council, they weren't there, he decided that the Council had a duty of care to keep out adventurous young children. To keep them out of the pool, knowing that kids were getting in at night and doing nothing to deter them. The gate the girls had found broken that night, had not been fixed in years.
A tanker driver who delivered there told me that fact, the gates were notorious to the workers but no one did anything, until 6 weeks after Lauren died and they rang us the council and asked us to quote on the gates.
Not realising who we were, the parents of a girl that had drowned there at night, not supposed to be there, so it's her fault.
We ended up taking the Council to court and won. It was a relief to the girls to have some body to focus blame on, that Lauren deserved to be deterred.
And how out of charcter it was for Lauren to do something so daring, but she was growing up and liked swimming and at night as she had in Bali a few months before.
So I now realise there is a lot more I don't remember, the mind kindly hiding the true horror, and coating it with a veil over the lens. So that I can survive and not fall down screaming.
I remember now her beauty and her smile and her happiness and that makes me happy, not sad. I like the fact we think what would have Lauren done here? or thought about that?
They asked Gregory Peck once if he missed his Son who had died and he said,
"Every hour of every day, every minute, every second"
We think about her every second.
And we live our lives accordingly, neatly arranged by a little girl who exuded love, and that is as it should be......
Love Mum xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
I took a trip to Queensland about 4 months after Lauren died. Persuading The Frouds, to let me take Kerry, Lauren's best friend and I don't remember anything about it. I know I was there, photos show I was there but it is gone to me.
Lost in time amd memory, if I look at the photos really hard, I sort of vaguely remember being there but no details emerge. Nothing, zilch, nada. I can see the dress I was wearing and shudder when I remember it. I never wore it again, for some reason.
I was a mad woman, lost in grief and confusion, I talked, I ate, I walked and slept and responded to people and I remember nothing. Gayle, Kerry's mum, reminding me of her recollection as Kerry and I emerged from the coach. She remembers B's annoyance at having to wait as the coach was delayed.
He was beside himself, muttering and complaining loudly, pacing up and down, agitated, swearing and making a compete dick of himself. Gayle grew tired of his antics. Thinking of me and Kerry and our pain, while he whinged and complained.
She remembered Deb, saying they the Frouds were pretty relaxed in their home,
"I wouldn't dare be like that around my Dad", Deb had said, "He's very strict"
He was more a controller I think and when he lost that control he went nuts.
But back to the trip....
I know I was there and I know I was there for Tassie earlier in the year, B and I blurting out our daughter had just died and there was no more conversation. People avoided us and I wondered what we were doing there. But it was painful to stay home, it was painful everywhere.
But of the Queensland trip I don't remember one detail, not one, weird.
I had tried goimg back to uni that year and had to leave, all I wanted to do was pine for my child and I wanted to hide, like a wounded animal. I conversed only with the girls and renovated the house. I just worked and worked, tiling and ripping wallpaper off and as I did, I realised nothing was mine.
I had picked out nothing in this house of horrors, nothing, not a curtain, nor wallpaper, nor paint, nor furniture, nor my clothes, shoes. Nothing said me, it all said B. So I changed it. Little Miss Rosie the Riveter, Miss Independent, and when a male friend called around and said,
"Girl, what are you doing?"
I was balanced on a ladder in a corner of the living room, painting, no fire on, middle of Winter, freezing cold. On my own, and everything felt grey, just grey, but I kept on working through it. Seeing my counsellers twice, three times a week. and pining for my child, just drooping.
I retiled the bathroom, had the kitchen re floored, I ripped up rotten floor boards and the smell of mould was enough to make you pass out. I had the roof repointed, knowing that we would sell, eventually but being stable was important for 12 months, the counsellers told me.
We had enough to deal with so keeping everything in balance was important. And we managed to do that, by focusing on Kyle, the baby, and he thought for years he had five Mothers.
I refused to go back to the business with B. after I had asked him to leave for the final time. And I began work elsewhere after the Inquest. The inquest was awful and photographers took our photos, while we tried to wave them away.
I had picked Yvette up that morning from hospital as she had a miscarriage. And people were crowding us and trying to get a good shot for the paper, the grieving family, who wants to see that?. People's pain.??
And we saw Tanya for the first time, her looming large in our imagination and she was just a tiny frightened 12 year old in school uniform. Crying, at what had happened.
Her Father being told off by the Coroner, Graeme Johnston, Castigating the man for leaving the two 12 year old girls on their own.
The Security Company Man cried too and said they had not done their job and the Company had gone out of business.
And I was called up, to say yes she was a good girl and yes it was out of character for her and all I could think of was that none of this was going to help.
Lauren was dead and no amount of crying or wishing or pleading with God was going to change it. There could be no pointing of fingers as it was a chain of events that went terrribly wrong, an accident, a tragic accident.
And I clung to that, and decided to go back to work and did. Not for B, but a new fresh company, with new faces and lots of work, the great distractor.
And met someone I eventually went out with and moved on slowly, slowly. The grief still there but more manageable.
And the Coroner saved his last castigation to Springvale Council, they weren't there, he decided that the Council had a duty of care to keep out adventurous young children. To keep them out of the pool, knowing that kids were getting in at night and doing nothing to deter them. The gate the girls had found broken that night, had not been fixed in years.
A tanker driver who delivered there told me that fact, the gates were notorious to the workers but no one did anything, until 6 weeks after Lauren died and they rang us the council and asked us to quote on the gates.
Not realising who we were, the parents of a girl that had drowned there at night, not supposed to be there, so it's her fault.
We ended up taking the Council to court and won. It was a relief to the girls to have some body to focus blame on, that Lauren deserved to be deterred.
And how out of charcter it was for Lauren to do something so daring, but she was growing up and liked swimming and at night as she had in Bali a few months before.
So I now realise there is a lot more I don't remember, the mind kindly hiding the true horror, and coating it with a veil over the lens. So that I can survive and not fall down screaming.
I remember now her beauty and her smile and her happiness and that makes me happy, not sad. I like the fact we think what would have Lauren done here? or thought about that?
They asked Gregory Peck once if he missed his Son who had died and he said,
"Every hour of every day, every minute, every second"
We think about her every second.
And we live our lives accordingly, neatly arranged by a little girl who exuded love, and that is as it should be......
Love Mum xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
