“Come home Mum!”
Amelia with her grandfather Wayne, who has been a pillar of support in the search. The heartbroken children of a devoted Victorian mother are still hoping for her safe return five years later
From the day her dearly loved mum Lorrin Whitehead vanished into thin air, Amelia Grozdanovski has never given up hope she will be found alive and well.
On February 8, 2013, mum-offive Lorrin, 41, disappeared after buying a bottle of water, a card and a pen from a local shop.
Amelia, now 25, decided from the moment her mum vanished she’d live life to the full, a decision that helps get her through the “unimaginable ache” of wondering what happened.
“She’s the best mum anyone could wish for. As a family we chose to live our lives as she’d have wanted us to. I made a pact this was not going to consume me on a day-to-day basis,”
Amelia tells Woman’s Day from her home in Newcastle, NSW.
“I don’t want her to miss anything from my life, so I started a memory book from the day she vanished. I record everything important that happens.
“It’s been both cathartic and comforting. I’m an emergency nurse at John Hunter Hospital, and I married my teenage sweetheart, who Mum adored. When she does one day come home she won’t have missed anything. It keeps my hopes alive.”
Amelia’s grandparents Wayne and Joan Whitehead haven’t stopped hoping to see Lorrin aga again n either, and have been a constant support to Amelia and her siblings, Megan, 18, Rachel, 17, Arnold, 15, and Quade, 14.14 14.
“Since my earliest memories of holidays in Queensland to my grandfather walking me down the aisle at my wedding, they’ve been there through it all.”
Amelia says one of her fondest memories of her mum were from Christmas time. “We’d pick berries to make jam but we’d eat more than we made into jam! We’d gift the jars to everyone in the family. It was our way of ‘spreading the love’.
“I spoke to her last two days before she vanished and she was in the best of spirits. We still celebrate her birthday. She’d have turned 46 on January 19.”
Amelia is aware the outcome could c be grim. “Mum is a type 1 diabetic and didn’t have her medication m with her,” she says. “That’s “not a good sign but the flame fl of hope still flickers.”
These days courageous Amelia A spends her free time working w closely with the police and a the Missing Persons Advocacy A Network to try to piece p together what happened to her mother.
Along the way she has spoken to many families about how to cope c with such an ambiguous loss. lo She says if she can help just one o family to come to terms with w their loss, her job is done.
Amelia and her husband Chris, an RAAF officer, are hoping their plans to start a family will bring much-needed joy after so much despair. “If I end up half as amazing as Mum, then I’ve done well,” she says.
“I never thought this could happen to me and to my family. Tragedy and loss is a part of life, but when you’re the family of a missing person, it’s different. There are no goodbyes so the normal grieving process never comes. You have to hold onto a sliver of hope that they’ll walk back through the front door one day. It’s what keeps us going.
“The darkest days for us, over time, have been heartless and cruel suggestions that perhaps mum abandoned us. She would never have done that to us. It was not in her nature.
“We were a normal family, full of love, laughter and mischief. We had some tough times, but we always pulled through united and with a smile. Just come home, Mum – we miss you!”
‘Mum would not have abandoned us… it’s not in her nature’