This week, I went to a support group catch up and I was reminded again of how lucky I have been. I know that sounds like a bit of a crazy thing to say, because Claytie dying was definitely not lucky (and it has been an absolutely devastating thing in my world)! – but with the circumstances around it and all of the things that have happened since, I do feel lucky!

Claytie was at home with us when he died. He could have been interstate and working, or travelling at the time. Instead, we got to be with him at home. I got to hold his hand until they took him away and I am so grateful to have had that time. We had all of his favourite people there with us, and the support was incredible. I was left in a position of being able to not only stay in our home, but also to do a fairly major renovation to make sure that the house is safe for as long as I want to be there. I have been able to support the boys, and we have grown even closer as a family, and of course I have some amazing friends and family to help pick up the pieces as well.

I have been able to reconcile Clayties death (more or less) for myself as nature. His heart stopped working and that is what caused him to die. The coroner told us that there was nothing anyone (including doctors) could have done for him at that time to change the outcome, and that has been reassuring for me and for the boys. I am not saying that it is ok…. It is not! It was awful and horrific and way, way too soon, but it was nature and therefore part of life, and ultimately for me, an easier thing to get my head around.

I have a couple of friends where nature was not the cause of death for their loved one, but rather that they died at the hands of another person. Someone made a deliberate choice to use a weapon to cause a death… and for me, that would be a much harder thing to come to terms with and to make any kind of sense out of.

On top of the suddenness and absolute trauma around the events, the follow up and consequences for these crimes seem to absolutely favour the perpetrators. I know that our legal system states innocent until proven guilty, and that is as it should be, but the court systems seem to be so incredibly slow moving, with cases often taking years to even be heard by a judge; and the punishments absolutely do not meet the severity of the crimes and the impacts on the families left behind!….and then there are the appeals that drag the entire process out for even longer. It all just seems so very hard and unfair on the victims that are left to try and move forward with their grief, trying to rebuild their shattered lives, to then also have to be dealing with lawyers and the judicial system.

Two of my friends are currently going through this process, and I really can’t imagine how difficult it must be to have that constant spotlight on them and their grief. To be a short story that is sensationalised across the news outlets, and to not have any sense of closure or justice for their person for such a long time after their world collapsed. It just adds a whole other level of “unfairness” to what is already such an awful time for people, and my heart absolutely goes out to them.