‘You don’t see it coming’

Seven years after losing two of her children, a mother says she’s not ready to forgive.

For years, Angela* has wondered why the father of her children decided to drive head-on into a truck, killing two of her children and injuring another.

‘‘Still now I’m in shock. I still don’t believe it.’’

It floors her every time she hears of a child being killed by a partner.

‘‘My heart breaks, because I think, you don’t see it coming. You really don’t.

‘‘It’s the one person that you think you can trust.’’

She’s read about women who forgive the men who killed their children. But seven years on, she’s just not at that point.

‘‘I’m just not there yet and I don’t know if I ever will be ... and I don’t know where you find forgiveness, to be honest. Because you know what? They so didn’t deserve it.’’

Angela had been separated from her husband for six months when her children went to spend the week with him.

She was out of town when the crash occurred. She received the call when she was hours away, and was unable to get to the hospital quickly.

‘‘Time changes nothing. When something like this happens, it changes every dynamic of your life - it changes the way you think.’’

The first few years were particularly hard.

‘‘It was just the lack of busyness, really.

‘‘I suddenly went from being a really busy mum to just having one child. I still struggle with that big time.’’

It took more than a year before she worked up the strength to pack up the children’s rooms and remove their toothbrushes from the bathroom.

But in the end, the ever-present emptiness became too much and she had to move out of the house, and out of the small town where the children had grown up.

‘‘I thought, I just can’t live here. You can’t walk in the same steps once something has gone.’’

And she wanted to shield her remaining child from what had happened.

‘‘She doesn’t know the bulk of the facts, and living there, she would have learned far sooner than I wanted to tell her.

‘‘And she would have always had people looking at her, saying ‘you poor thing’. I didn’t want her growing up being a victim.’’

A change of career helped Angela get out of her ‘‘hermit life’’.

‘‘But suddenly I found taking [my daughter to school] and seeing the children doing their Jump Jam (a mix of dance and aerobics) - well, it would take my breath away and ruin my whole day.’’

She volunteered at her daughter’s school for a while, then decided to train as a nurse.

She has remarried and says she has no regrets about the past.

‘‘I think they had a wonderful childhood.

‘‘I just hope like anything that they knew nothing, you know.’’