FIVE YEARS ON, LEE RIGBY’S MUM This is the first year that I won’t be in a darkened room sobbing
ON the fifth anniversary of her son’s murder, Lyn Rigby will begin the day by getting down on her hands and knees – and scrubbing the floors.
When she has finished that, she will clean the bathrooms and bedrooms, change the beds, and check everything is spick and span inside the loving memorial to her son that has helped pull her back from the brink of suicide.
This is Lee Rigby House, a home and sanctuary for struggling Army veterans and their relatives.
A place Lyn has lovingly created where they can deal with their own personal hell. Just as she has tried to come to terms with hers – the day her boy was cruelly snatched from her in a bloody attack by Muslim extremists that stunned the nation.
On May 22, it will be five years since radicalised Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale hacked Fusilier Lee Rigby, 25, to death with a meat cleaver as he walked to the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, South East London.
The horror killing plunged Lyn, 51, into a pit of all-consuming grief.
But she reveals today how she was astonishingly rescued from her torment by the heartbreaking plight of a homeless alcoholic Army veteran – who says “she saved my life” – and the remarkable kindness of an ex-professional wrestler.
HELPING
“I was in a deep, dark hole and I couldn’t find my way out,” says mumof-five Lyn. “This is the first year I won’t be in a darkened room sobbing.
“It is what I usually do when an anniversary comes around. But not any more. I think that fact alone would make Lee happy. I have found helping others helps me – but it has been a long hard road. I thought about ending it. It was hard because those thoughts were always in my head.
“But it’s pretty selfish just to think of yourself because I’ve got daughters who need a mother and who lost a brother. I thought about myself a lot, because I had lost a son. But I’m not like that now. This year May 22 is on a Tuesday so I will be working.
“I will get up and make sure the accommodation is right for the people coming to stay at Lee Rigby House. I will not be hiding away. I will be cleaning the floors, the toilets, changing the beds and making sure everything is ship-shape for the vets who need our help. It’s not about me any more. It’s about them.”
Lyn tells how her light at the end of an agonising long dark tunnel came in the shape of Peter Thornley, 77 – aka masked wrestling legend Kendo Nagasaki. A devout Buddhist, he was touched by her plight and invited her to his country estate in Oakamoor, Staffs, three years ago. He wanted to help her deal with her grief through Zen therapy sessions using ‘singing bowls’ meditation to help people find inner peace. Lyn says: “I didn’t believe in this kind of thing before, but I came to one of Peter’s weekends and it just changed my life. It was a big turning point for me. It brought me peace.” Since then Peter has made a massive commitment to the Lee Rigby Foundation set up by the family after Lee’s death. Last August, Lyn moved with her husband Ian, 59, a supermarket worker, and two of their four daughters Courtney, 16 and Amy, 13, to a four bedroomed house on the estate.
Peter gave it to them along with a nearby building, now Lee Rigby House – a large home with a kitchen, dining room, two living rooms, two double bedrooms and two single bedrooms.
Then came the next huge breakthrough for Lyn, in the shape of the first struggling veteran to stay there. Michael Kay, 52, had fallen on hard times after leaving the Duke of Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment. He became a roofer, suffered money problems and turned to drink. When he fell off a roof breaking his leg he lost his job and was eventually admitted to the hospital in Stoke-on-Trent as a homeless alcoholic. Last November Lyn heard about his story through the Foundation’s contacts and decided to help. Michael says: “I was living rough and ended up in hospital after getting septicaemia. I had an operation to have