Grandmothers tell of darling ‘mummy’s girl’
Gracie-May McSorley’s family ask themselves: How do you measure a life-time’s absence?
It had been a long delivery for Charlotte McSorley. Her family gathered at Wellington Hospital at 6am, where she was induced, but the birth had gone late into that night.
Grandmothers Sara McSorley and Clare Marler were there and finally GracieMay McSorley crowned with a mass of dark hair and, despite the tension and exhaustion, Sara McSorley looked at her new granddaughter and said ‘‘oh, it’s an alien’’.
The tired new mum actually laughed out loud.
The question for GracieMay’s family, one of the many, is how do you measure a lifetime’s absence? The dark mass of hair barely had time to turn golden blonde before she was killed six months later.
In June, her killer, Michael Te Kouarehu Kereopa, pleaded guilty in the High Court at Wellington to her manslaughter.
The day after watching Kereopa’s emotionless plea, Marler said it was hard to believe her granddaughter had been dead longer than she was alive. ’’She would be one and a half now.’’
Marler and Sara McSorley spoke for their family about losing a baby: what she was like in her short life, and what she might have become.
Gracie-May was a mummy’s girl, a cry-baby, Big Gracie with her blonde hair. Her legs ‘‘were the fattest legs I’d ever seen in my life’’, Marler said.
‘‘I used to say that she could be a foghorn for Red Rocks. She suffered really bad colic. Man she bellowed.’’
The colic was finally clearing in June 2015, Marler said, giving her a few weeks of quiet bonding with her granddaughter.
In July 2015, Kereopa, 32, had only recently started living with Charlotte McSorley, six-monthold Gracie-May, and her older sister at Marler’s home on the Kapiti Coast.
On July 6, Kereopa was alone with Gracie-May and a Crown summary, which was not disputed, said he lost his temper and lashed out, causing a severe head injury when he struck the right side of her head. Her injury was not survivable. Life support was switched off the following evening and she died soon after.
The grandmothers both agree on what their granddaughter would be like if she had grown to adulthood
– tall, and strong. ‘‘Six foot two’’, Marler said, and blonde, unlike her dark-haired, and smaller older sister.
Kereopa was sentenced in the High Court at Wellington last week to eight years jail.
Marler was glad he was locked up.
‘‘At least we’ve got six months of memories of her.’’