by Leigh Sales
Soon after, a large set of waves loomed further out in the ocean. An unbroken wave is a moving lump of water over which it is easy to manoeuvre a surfboard. Once it breaks, it unloads all its energy. If the board rider is not on top of the wave as it breaks, the only option, to avoid being pummelled, is to dive underneath it. That can be dangerous if the surfer starts to lose breath or panic and so it’s always preferable to paddle over the top if possible. As this new set of waves started to build, Adam paddled as fast as he could to ride over them, aware that he wasn’t in the right position to surf. He went over the first wave then duck-dived under the next couple. When he came up, he looked behind him to see how Matt had fared. All he saw was Matt’s surfboard briefly pop out of the water, in a way that suggested it was unmanned. Adam started paddling over to check that Matt was okay and he saw his friend upright and treading water, near the rocks.
Adam called out to ask if Matt needed help and Matt gestured in a way that Adam couldn’t interpret. Although Matt didn’t seem panicked, the turbulent water started to sweep him northward towards Tamarama.
A fisherman high up on the rocks had a clear view of what was happening and he watched as Matt was swept into a gap in the rocks where the water was particularly rough. The fisherman called 000 on his mobile phone. At the same time, a nearby member of the public had also been watching with some concern. He walked into the Bronte Surf Livesaving Club to report that a surfer may be in trouble. There was no lifeguard on duty at Bronte that day and so a call went to Bondi Beach, several kilometres away, and an experienced lifesaver raced to them on a jet ski.
Adam did everything he could to reach Matt. The same surfer who earlier noted the deteriorating conditions, Leigh Jackson, also tried. People started to gather on the beach and the cliff top. One of them later described Matt as ‘bobbing like a cork’. A bystander on the cliff pointed to a large rock, trying to help Adam spot Matt’s whereabouts.
Leigh finally caught sight of Matt again as he was trying to clamber out of the water at the base of the cliff, but before Matt could get clear, a large wave crashed into him, smashing him against the jagged rock face. One of the onlookers shouted, ‘He’s gone under!’ The water receded, taking Matt with it, away from the rocks, and at last both Adam and Leigh reached him. Matt was floating face down with numerous cuts on his head.
The men struggled to get him to the beach. Other people quickly ran to help but he was unconscious and unresponsive. Before long an ambulance was on the sand. Matt lay flat on his back on the ocean side of the vehicle as paramedics worked on him. They gave Matt repeated doses of adrenalin and oxygen and applied defibrillator pads. Groups of people were standing well back, on either side of the ambulance, watching in horror. A surfer in a wetsuit – Adam – was holding his forehead with both hands. Two police officers were there, one with a hand on his cheek.
Later that afternoon, Hannah arrived back at their cottage from her day of writing. The babysitter was in the back room with the children and she could hear them chortling and playing. In the living room were two strangers, plainclothes police officers waiting for Hannah’s return. One of them was a woman and although she wasn’t crying, Hannah could see that she looked very upset and knew instantly that something terrible had happened.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘I’m very sorry to say your husband’s been in a surfing accident,’ one of them told her.
Hannah recoiled. ‘Is he okay?’
The answer was devastating. Matt, only forty-one years old, was dead on the beach even before the ambulance arrived. Everything Hannah had assumed about their future together, about the order of the universe, died along with him. The police said she needed to call somebody to come and sit with her but she didn’t want to. That would make it real.
Almost exactly two years later, I ride my Vespa to visit Hannah in a leafy part of Sydney’s inner west (and no, it’s not lost on me that riding a motorcycle is a provocative act for somebody writing a book about sudden, life-changing disasters). It is just the type of day on which Matt would have loved to go surfing – there’s a nip in the air but in the sun it’s crisp and pleasant. The sky looks freshly scrubbed to a gleaming blue. It’s exhilarating to weave the scooter through the alleys and laneways to Hannah’s cottage.
Hannah is putting the rubbish out when I arrive. She wears ugg boots, jeans and a loose jumper and still manages to look stylish. Inside her house it’s cosy and inviting. The kids’ art is stuck to the fridge and one of the drawings has a caption that reads ‘I love my dad so much.’ Matt’s handsome, open face smiles warmly from a framed picture. Hannah makes tea and we sit at the kitchen table, sharing some treats she’s bought from a local patisserie.
I had written to her about a month before we met, explaining the questions I wanted to address in this book. I asked if she’d be willing to talk about the hard trudge through week after week, month after month, of grief. I wanted to know how it had changed her and whether any good had come of it. She agreed to meet because she felt that nobody had much wanted to hear about the aftermath of Matt’s death. When she found herself unexpectedly in the midst of trauma, she had no idea how to navigate the terrain because the subject is almost never discussed.
Hannah distinctly remembers the overwhelming feeling, that afternoon when the police told her that Matt had died, of not wanting to tell anybody.
‘I just said, “I don’t want anyone to know.” It was this extreme feeling of embarrassment. I don’t know why I was embarrassed. It was like, This can’t be happening to us, and not wanting it to be real,’ she says. Reflecting on it now, it seems crazy to Hannah that her first feeling was embarrassment, but that was how her brain and body reacted to the shock.
Although a person dies in Australia every three minutes and seventeen seconds, Matt’s death was the one that captured media attention that day. It happened in a public space and he was a young, good-looking man, well known and respected in his field. Australians are also particularly entranced by news stories of mishaps in the ocean, perhaps because going to the beach is such a quintessentially Australian experience, one with which almost everyone can identify. It jars when a blameless person is struck down enjoying a common, pleasurable activity, and the feeling that ‘it could have been me’ is very strong.
The police gently pointed out to Hannah that there was no way she’d be able to stop Matt’s name from imminently appearing in the media. It wouldn’t be good for people to find out that way, they said. It meant that Hannah faced the pressure of having to act quickly when she was in deep shock. It wasn’t the fault of the police, or even the media necessarily, it was just the way things were.
So she rang her sister in Melbourne. She also had to ring Matt’s father in the UK, a dreadful task and one that still haunts her. It was terribly confronting to have to say out loud that Matt had died and then witness everybody bustle into action.
‘I didn’t want the house filled with people, because in my head I couldn’t believe it had happened,’ Hannah says. ‘My biggest concern was the kids. I felt this overwhelming need to protect them and somehow make it not as awful as it was for them. That’s probably why I didn’t tell them until the next morning, because I felt like I wanted them to have one more night where it wasn’t real.’
At one point late that afternoon, Hannah asked the police if they were sure it was Matt. He had told her he was going to go to Maroubra, a beach further south. Maybe there’d been a mistake? It was definitely him, the police insisted. Soon afterwards, more police officers arrived with Matt’s car.
‘They turned over his wallet and his wedding ring. That was quite a moment, to be handed a ziplock bag with his wedding ring and wallet. I was just like, Okay, now that feels real.’
By that time, Adam had already formally identified Matt’s body, which meant that Hannah didn’t have to go to the morgue if she didn’t want to.
The question of whether or not to attend a viewing, as it’s called, is something ma
ny bereaved people grapple with. Some of us are terrified and don’t want to. Others aren’t sure. Some people are utterly certain straight away that they must see the body. It’s a decision that has to be made fairly quickly, and that means it’s made in the fresh grip of shock and trauma. If somebody later regrets their decision, it cannot be undone. They may regret being persuaded to do the opposite of their initial preference, or feel they were given inadequate information about what to expect. There is some research that shows it’s psychologically useful to attend a viewing, as it helps the bereaved accept the reality of the loved one’s death; this is in line with what Steve Sinn firmly believes from his practical experience.
Hannah was one of those people who instantly knew that she needed to see her husband’s body. Matt had to have an autopsy first and so it was almost twenty-four hours before she was permitted to see him. She arrived at the morgue late on Thursday afternoon and a woman around her own age met her in the reception area. Hannah recalls that the woman’s presence was extraordinarily reassuring.
‘She was the first person I felt understood what was happening. She had this incredibly calm, knowledgeable demeanour, which made me instantly feel a bit safer.’
The woman told Hannah what to expect to see. In great detail, she described how Matt was laid out, what he was wearing, even the colour of the sheet covering him and what the wounds on his face and head looked like. The woman asked Hannah if she had any questions and then said she could go in by herself if she wished, or have somebody accompany her. She could touch Matt, she could take as long as she wanted. Hannah steeled herself and walked inside. The woman stayed with her for a couple of minutes and then left her alone.
‘It was a bit scary to see him, but not him. He was like a sort of Madame Tussauds model. He didn’t have much hair. He had a very shaved head, so you saw the stitches. I was like, That’s not Matt. But it was Matt,’ says Hannah softly. ‘The detail for me that felt the most personal – because they had washed him and put him in a hospital gown – was when I took hold of his hand, there was sand in his palm still. I felt . . . It’s you.’
Let me break into Hannah’s story here to tell you what it’s like to sit across from her and hear this. Over the previous hour, she has told me how she and Matt met, what his interests were, what their life was like, how much they loved each other. Here I am, sitting in the very heart of their old life, at their kitchen table, where they would have spent hours with each other and their children. Hannah is so lovely, sitting here, sharing tea with me, trusting me with these intimate details. Matt’s face looks at me from the frame nearby. When Hannah tells me that as she caresses his hand, he is still holding the sand from the beach, it takes every last bit of my willpower to not collapse sobbing. It feels as if everything about their story is contained in those grains of sand: the impermanence of life, the swiftness of change. I want to weep at the injustice of it, the cruelty of the loss. If I’m telling this story matter-of-factly, it’s because I’m trained by years of practice as a journalist to do it that way. The truth is, as I’m writing these words, tears are streaming down my face.
Once the first few weeks pass after a death, one of the hardest things is that life keeps relentlessly rolling on. Like the ocean, the tides keep rising and falling, the waves breaking and retreating. Everybody returns to their regular routine and there’s an expectation that the bereaved person will start the process of ‘recovery’. This is very difficult to do because for a grieving person, the most ordinary activities can take on deep meaning that would never cross anybody else’s mind.
Hannah says, ‘I remember being in the supermarket and someone bumping into me. It was the first time I’d been to the supermarket since Matt had died, probably only two weeks after. I was walking around with the trolley and you’re confronted by all the things you don’t need to buy anymore. Matt used to have gluten-free bread, for example. I thought, Well, I don’t need to buy that anymore. It’s the most mundane detail but it kills you inside. And someone bumped into me and didn’t say sorry. I didn’t do anything but I just wanted to turn around and go, “You don’t know what’s happened to me! I’m grieving!” It can be the tiniest thing that wounds you.’
‘Was there ever a time, as irrational as it might be, when there was a sense of irritation or feeling of “Where is he?” ’ I ask.
‘All the time, all the time. I remember “Where are you?” constantly. It felt like someone had literally just rubbed him out. It’s baffling, utterly baffling,’ Hannah says.
The reaction among Hannah’s friends was mixed. Some had a fix-it mentality and constantly offered solutions as to how Hannah could stop feeling so wretched. Some couldn’t handle her grief and backed away. Some had their own problems and had no capacity to take on somebody else’s. And others of course were amazing. Many offered practical support, like food or babysitting. A kind few had the emotional intelligence to just sit with her and let her fall apart or be in pain. They didn’t try to change it or offer platitudes. They were just there, accompanying, to use Steve Sinn’s word. Hannah found that was some of the most valuable support.
‘Having had this experience, if a friend was going through the loss of a partner or dealing with cancer or something like that, do you think you’d behave differently?’ I ask.
‘I would for sure. I wouldn’t be so scared to be with them. It is scary being with people who are in extreme pain. The fear is you’re going to do something that makes it worse. But I know now the worst thing you can do is ignore it or pretend it’s not happening and not be there for them.’ Hannah’s reply is very similar to the sentiments Walter Mikac expressed.
A few weeks after Matt’s death, Hannah felt so dreadful that she arranged to visit a psychologist, a free service offered by the NSW Department of Forensic Medicine. When she arrived for her first appointment, her counsellor turned out to be the same woman who’d helped her with the viewing of Matt’s body.
‘I talked to her about everything. From the word go, it was everything from “I don’t want to live anymore, I can’t do this” to “I can’t handle the children. How do I cope with their grief when I’m falling apart inside?” There was “I really miss having sex and I feel this incredible shame about wanting to have sex, my husband’s just died!” It felt like there was nothing off limits and there was no judgement from her, ever.’
Hannah was grappling with the same questions that many suddenly bereaved people have.
‘I remember saying endlessly, “We were so happy, I just don’t understand how this could have happened. He was such a good person. There are so many terrible people out in the world and why Matt?” ’
There is sometimes an impression that attending counselling is a passive exercise: you see a psychologist, download your feelings and problems, leave, then do the same the following week. But for it to be beneficial, it must be a very active process. A good counsellor will give you a gentle steer about how to move your thinking in new directions. You have to apply yourself to doing that in between visits if you want to grow and adapt. Hannah began to try it, actively challenging her assumptions about life and death, trying to make sense of what had happened to her.
‘I remember thinking, Why us? Very quickly, I got around to, Why not us? There’s nothing special about us. And I think sometimes we can live our lives thinking we’re in a special bubble, like the world’s revolving around us. I had to face the brutal realisation that living a “good” life and doing things in a certain, careful way did not necessarily afford us any special protection or safety. We are each as vulnerable as the next person on the planet, and that was both a terrifying and enlightening fact.’
Because Matt’s death was a public event, it was the subject of a coronial inquest to find out exactly what had happened. Everyone who had been at the beach that day – the other surfers, the lifeguard, the fisherman on the rocks – was summonsed to give evidence. Before the inquest started, Hannah thought she already knew all the details, and yet the pro
cess was so forensic that new information emerged, and for that, Hannah was grateful.
‘Having a witness, someone who was there, who was the person with Matt when he died, was incredibly comforting and helpful to me,’ she says. ‘For me to work through everything, that sort of detail was invaluable. If it had been shrouded in mystery and I was left with loads of “How did it happen?” kind of questions, I think it would have been a lot harder.’
The formal finding was that Matt died from ‘misadventure’ when the surf swept him against the rocks of a sea cliff, inflicting incapacitating head injuries that caused him to drown. The inquest report specifically noted that Matt was a sensible and careful person who surfed responsibly and was well aware of his limitations. In the words of the coroner, it was a ‘wretched’ event.
The hearings themselves were very rough on Hannah, who spent most of the time in the public gallery weeping quietly.
‘I got very drunk the night after the inquest finished, went and drank margaritas with my sister,’ she recalls.
By the time the inquest ended, almost two years had passed since Matt’s death. But then a few days later, Hannah noticed that she felt different.
‘I felt this lightness settling on me, which was new. It’s not closure, because I will live with Matt’s death and the pain of it every day and the grief will stay with me. I just felt that I was carrying it differently. It was in a place inside me that was more contained, it wasn’t all of me. It wasn’t like raw, open grief. It was almost like the scab had grown over. Occasionally you pick at it, or it might come off when you’re not expecting it and you start bleeding again.’
Hannah has written, in her own words, ‘three overwrought diaries’, just to let all the grief out. She has had a lot of counselling and done a lot of reading. Some days are better than others.
