As a nation, we watched as West Australian parents Rin Norris and Anthony Maslin said their goodbyes to their three children Mo, Evie, and Otis Maslin, 12, 10 and eight, respectively, who died with their grandfather Nick Norris and hundreds of others when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot from the skies over Ukraine by Russian-backed separatists on July 17.
Rin and Anthony’s sorrow was profound, bringing many who watched the televised funeral service to tears. Rin expressed her loss and longing with heart-breaking clarity: “When their innocent bodies were shot out of the sky, I stretched my arms as high as I could and screamed for them,” she said. “Now I see them only in my head. I can’t touch them. I can’t feel their warmth. My arms will always be reaching for them.”
To discover how people navigate such loss, The Weekly spoke to three parents who lost their children: Rosie Batty, whose son Luke died in February last year at the hands of his own father, Samantha Hayward, whose 19-day-old baby Ella died in 2009 from a severe viral myocardial infection; Caroline Verity whose three-year-old daughter India died in a tragic 11 years ago when a metal goal post struck her.
“With something as horrific as what happened to Luke, I had a complete incapacity to take it in,” says Rosie. “In a way your body and your mind stop you taking it in because it is too awful. It’s a kind of natural defence mechanism that keeps reality at bay.
“I was protected by that, more protected than my friends and family. They were completely distraught but I was in a state of emotional numbness. People found it strange that I wasn’t sobbing or weeping uncontrollably. I thought it was strange, too. I fell apart when my cat died but this was my son and I wasn’t devastated or out of control with grief.
“I thought I should be wailing on the floor but I never did that. My coping mechanism has been to keep busy. I took up a campaign against domestic violence and that has taken up a lot of my energy and focus. I found that I needed to find something positive in what happened.”
