Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma mea podcast Muma Mer acknowledges the
Speaker 1: traditional owners of the land and waters.
Speaker 2: This podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1: This episode discusses suicide and won't be for everyone. If
Speaker 1: you or anyone you know need support, there is a
Speaker 1: list of services available in our show notes. There's something
Speaker 1: special about meeting your person later in life. You have
Speaker 1: a stronger sense of who you are, shaped by everything
Speaker 1: you've been through, the highs the lows, and you move
Speaker 1: with a kind of calm confidence that just fits. And
Speaker 1: that was certainly the case for Amy and Matt.
Speaker 2: We'd spend our days going out to the bush to
Speaker 2: catch yabbies, or to cut firewood, or just listen to nature.
Speaker 2: Two dogs, often often lambs, often rescue kangaroos, and we
Speaker 2: just have this little happy life in this forty foot donga. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I thought I have one the lotto.
Speaker 1: But life always has a way of testing us. The
Speaker 1: longer you live it, the more you're asked to carry,
Speaker 1: and over time that weight can take its toll. Even
Speaker 1: with the stronger support around you, some burdens can feel
Speaker 1: just too heavy to hold.
Speaker 2: He was showing away from therapy, but when he met
Speaker 2: this psychologist. He came home and he's like, things are
Speaker 2: on the up. You know, I had no idea that
Speaker 2: this would happen to me.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later, I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone
Speaker 1: has an ex Come with me as we dive into
Speaker 1: a collection of unconventional stories about relationships past through the
Speaker 1: eyes and the hearts of the very people who lived them.
Speaker 1: Meet Amy, thirty seven years old and a single mom
Speaker 1: to a beautiful eight year old daughter named Heidi. It
Speaker 1: had always been just the two of them, not for
Speaker 1: lack of trying.
Speaker 2: I'd been dating on Tinder, and I'd had a lot
Speaker 2: of bad dates, and I and up all hope of
Speaker 2: finding someone. My Tinder history was colorful. I have a
Speaker 2: lot of interesting stories from that actually, including but not
Speaker 2: limited to, one guy who confessed that he liked to
Speaker 2: eat crayons over while we were eating dinner and asked
Speaker 2: me if that would be a problem moving forward. I
Speaker 2: think the thing was with my Tinder experiences, I was
Speaker 2: always trying to I didn't really feel good enough, and
Speaker 2: I was always trying to impress the person, Whereas what
Speaker 2: I really needed to realize and spend time on my own,
Speaker 2: was that they needed to impress me. And by this
Speaker 2: point I was thirty seven, so I think everyone around me,
Speaker 2: including me, didn't think I would end up with someone.
Speaker 2: It was always just me and Heidi from day one,
Speaker 2: so from when she was a little baby, and that
Speaker 2: was really what we had all thought would be my future.
Speaker 1: Well, Amy loved being a mum and she and Heidi
Speaker 1: had a beautiful life. She did want to find a partner.
Speaker 1: She had so much love to give and wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to share the beautiful life she had created
Speaker 1: with someone else.
Speaker 2: I was really lonely and I didn't want to be
Speaker 2: on my own. I wanted to share my life with
Speaker 2: someone and I really wanted for in particular HARDI to
Speaker 2: have that father figure. I worked really hard. I worked
Speaker 2: full time from when she was a little baby. I
Speaker 2: really didn't have any time off when she was born,
Speaker 2: and so I really wanted to just have that family unit.
Speaker 2: And although I was scared of it, have some support
Speaker 2: from someone else, which the longer I was dating and
Speaker 2: not meeting someone, I almost got scared of having support
Speaker 2: because I never wanted to lose it. That's when I
Speaker 2: just became at peace with not even looking anymore. And
Speaker 2: that's when the universe said to me, here you go,
Speaker 2: here's your man.
Speaker 1: His name was Matt. He'd swiped right as a g
Speaker 1: and he quickly asked her out on a date. With
Speaker 1: her mindset as it was at the time, she went
Speaker 1: into it knowing it was just going to be another
Speaker 1: meeting that goes nowhere, or so she thought.
Speaker 2: He wasn't the kind of guy that I would usually
Speaker 2: look into. He's a gorgeous guy, but a country boy,
Speaker 2: you know, very ozzy, like a little bit bogan, big
Speaker 2: long orange beard. I didn't really put much effort into
Speaker 2: the date, to be honest. Usually I would have bought
Speaker 2: a new outfit or put lots of makeup on. But
Speaker 2: this particular day, Heidi and I had roller skating class,
Speaker 2: and I dropped Heidy off to her babysitters and went
Speaker 2: straight to the bar where I met Matt. And I
Speaker 2: was even running late when I walked in and I
Speaker 2: saw this man in this baby blue collared shirt. He
Speaker 2: was so tall, and he had the biggest smile on
Speaker 2: his face, and I just thought to myself, oh damn,
Speaker 2: I'm in trouble here. I didn't believe in love at
Speaker 2: first sight, but I knew when I assume I've got goosebumps.
Speaker 2: As soon as I saw this guy, I knew that
Speaker 2: was it. It was actually a very interesting date. I
Speaker 2: went to the bathroom at one point in time and
Speaker 2: I came out and he had struck up a conversation
Speaker 2: with a couple who were there celebrating their fortieth winning anniversary.
Speaker 2: And he'd actually organized a doubles game of pool, and
Speaker 2: I loved that about him, that he could just struck
Speaker 2: up a conversation, you know, so down to earth organized
Speaker 2: this game of Paul and this couple actually had their
Speaker 2: first date forty years ago at that same pub, and
Speaker 2: they asked, how long have you two been together, and
Speaker 2: we said, we've literally just met, and they said, no way,
Speaker 2: you guys are destined to be. From there, we decided
Speaker 2: let's continue on the evening, and what better way than
Speaker 2: to go to the National Park and walk through an
Speaker 2: abandoned railway tunnel. And we were walking towards this abandoned
Speaker 2: railway tunnel and I'm kind of like, all confident, and
Speaker 2: then this kangaroo jumps out in front of me and
Speaker 2: I leapt up into Matt's big arms, and he just
Speaker 2: he just went, it's okay. And I sort of folded.
Speaker 2: At that point in time. I went, Okay, you know,
Speaker 2: like he's got me. He did come back to my place,
Speaker 2: and we always refer to it as the third date
Speaker 2: because it makes us feel better about the fact he
Speaker 2: came home that night. But yeah, we walked into my
Speaker 2: little townhouse and I cracked on and lit the fire,
Speaker 2: and Matt was just standing there looking at me, thinking,
Speaker 2: I've never dated a girl that can roll up her
Speaker 2: sleeves and light a fire. I love like I like
Speaker 2: this girl a lot. And then I decided to put
Speaker 2: some Netflix on and we chose the Ted Bundy movie
Speaker 2: with Zach Efron in it. And when I was telling
Speaker 2: my colleagues at work about what this date like Howard
Speaker 2: had unfolded, they said to me, were you actively trying
Speaker 2: to push this guy away? And I said, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: He's just company was just so awesome, and he was
Speaker 2: just so fun. And it never occurred to me that
Speaker 2: it was super strange what we got.
Speaker 1: Up to that far, but it wasn't strange for them,
Speaker 1: And isn't that the sign you've met your match. It
Speaker 1: was no surprise from that very first or third day.
Speaker 1: They didn't have eyes for anyone else.
Speaker 2: It was definitely a given. He was such a gentleman,
Speaker 2: so he actually asked me and he even said, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd really like to be in an exclusive relationship with you.
Speaker 2: And we just had organized for me, I think, the
Speaker 2: following weekend to go up to the farm, which he
Speaker 2: originally was a bit embarrassed that he lived with his mum.
Speaker 2: They had the family farm since the early eighties, and
Speaker 2: his mom was elderly, and they lived in two different dwellings,
Speaker 2: and he lived in a donga, which for those who
Speaker 2: don't know, is a transportable home. And I didn't find
Speaker 2: that embarrassing at all. I thought, oh, tiny living. I've
Speaker 2: always wanted to do that. But yeah, when I first
Speaker 2: went up to the farm, I thought that I should
Speaker 2: drop a pin to one of my friends just to
Speaker 2: let them know where I was, because seeing all this
Speaker 2: rusty machinery, and I thought, oh, I'm not in Kansas anymore,
Speaker 2: you know, like it was a lot. It was a
Speaker 2: very different environment from what I was used to, you know,
Speaker 2: farm animals everywhere. I thought it was a bit rub
Speaker 2: zombie or Devil's rejax. He'lls have eyes, you know, the
Speaker 2: old banjo diddling ding ding ding ding, Nindy.
Speaker 1: But of course she hadn't needed to worry. As soon
Speaker 1: as she saw Mad in his happy place, it quickly
Speaker 1: became hers too, and that day provided what can be
Speaker 1: a big step in any relationship.
Speaker 2: It was the first time I met his mum, Colleen,
Speaker 2: and she just was the most beautiful, the opposite, just tiny,
Speaker 2: but these big blue eyes and just so engaging. He
Speaker 2: had a daughter named Sally, and she was a year
Speaker 2: younger than Heidi. The first time the girls met was
Speaker 2: hilarious in that both of them were clinging onto each
Speaker 2: of us separately, just sort of looking at each other
Speaker 2: from behind us, And all of a sudden, Heidi said
Speaker 2: to Sally, do you want to follow me? And Sally
Speaker 2: said yeah, all right, and off they went, and they
Speaker 2: became thick as thieves from there, and things moved very quickly.
Speaker 2: So I was commuting with Heidi from where we lived
Speaker 2: near the city out to the property, and it was
Speaker 2: a lot of driving, and we just wanted to be
Speaker 2: in each other's lives all the time. And I think
Speaker 2: when you get to that age, if you know, you know,
Speaker 2: it felt so natural. And when Colin and Matt asked
Speaker 2: us to move in. We just did. We moved in
Speaker 2: and that was I think after about six or seven months.
Speaker 2: So I moved in to this donga with Matt and
Speaker 2: sometimes Sally and eventually two dogs, often often lambs, often
Speaker 2: rescue kangaroos. And we just had this little happy life
Speaker 2: in this forty foot donger. And yeah, it just really
Speaker 2: was so natural. Basically we'd spend our days going out
Speaker 2: to the bush to catch yabbies or to cut firewood
Speaker 2: or just listen to nature. We did a lot of camping,
Speaker 2: a lot of fo wool driving. We just let a
Speaker 2: simple life, climbing trees. You know. We all had a
Speaker 2: horse and so we'd ride the horses as a family.
Speaker 2: Very quickly. I was right in the thick of it,
Speaker 2: nutting sheep with Matt or helping deliver a lamb. We
Speaker 2: would talk about the future. We wanted to own a
Speaker 2: thousand acres one day, continue looking after his mum. I
Speaker 2: just loved how safe he made me feel. I've also
Speaker 2: loved the fact he looked after his mum. The other
Speaker 2: thing I liked about him is he was so popular
Speaker 2: and he had so many friends. And where we live,
Speaker 2: they have a brotherhood they call it. But it's a
Speaker 2: group of male friends. They call each other the brothers,
Speaker 2: and we would have a lot of social things with them,
Speaker 2: just at each other's properties, so bonfires, drinks, and when
Speaker 2: he entered the room, the party, the party was on,
Speaker 2: and he would just do silly things, like one time
Speaker 2: he just went off to the back of his patrol
Speaker 2: and grabbed out a man keeni and put that on.
Speaker 2: And he loved his body, and he had no shame
Speaker 2: about his body whatsoever. He was just so happy, very
Speaker 2: much a contrast from where I had been in my life,
Speaker 2: where I was always wanting to be loved like this
Speaker 2: was a proper I always said that my grandfather, who'd
Speaker 2: passed away in twenty seventeen, I always said that my
Speaker 2: grandfather sent Matt to me as a gift, probably a
Speaker 2: year into our relationship. He had been working for twenty
Speaker 2: five years at the same workshop. He was a steel fabricator,
Speaker 2: and he wasn't happy. And he in particular the on
Speaker 2: site work where he'd have to interface with an architect,
Speaker 2: say to build some stairs that his boss should actually
Speaker 2: be doing that interaction. He found it very stressful. So
Speaker 2: we made the decision that my income could support our
Speaker 2: simple life and that he would be a stay at
Speaker 2: home dad. So he actually stopped working at that point
Speaker 2: and looked after Heidi. I wanted him to just explore
Speaker 2: what made him feel happy and have that time to
Speaker 2: be around the farm, because he was always so busy
Speaker 2: leaving the house at seeks and getting back at seks
Speaker 2: and sometimes he would drive to Sally's mom's house to
Speaker 2: say good night to Sally and put her to bed.
Speaker 2: But he was just such a good dad, and I
Speaker 2: really wanted him to just take a beat. He would
Speaker 2: make Heidi's breakfast in the morning, and he would be
Speaker 2: the one going on the school camp. He was the
Speaker 2: silly dad that would be at the sports kind of
Speaker 2: wearing a tutu and that kind of stuff. He just
Speaker 2: really slipped into it, and I loved that, and Heardy
Speaker 2: just adored him, and Sally adored him, and the girls
Speaker 2: were always hanging off him, like hanging around his neck,
Speaker 2: literally like monkey's hanging off him. She called him Mattou,
Speaker 2: my Mattou, and she just loved him. I would say
Speaker 2: it took a couple of months for her to adjust
Speaker 2: because she'd always it had always just been me and her,
Speaker 2: but she she just absolutely loved him, and she loved
Speaker 2: having a sister. And I think that it didn't take
Speaker 2: long for them to and I was hesitant to introduce
Speaker 2: them to each other too soon, but again, it just
Speaker 2: it just felt so right. And probably a couple of
Speaker 2: months or no, probably a couple of weeks after I
Speaker 2: met him, so I always wanted to have maybe another child,
Speaker 2: So Sally was my bonus daughter. I very much always
Speaker 2: have viewed her as that, having this bonus daughter in
Speaker 2: my life who I just adored, and I adored watching
Speaker 2: Matt with Sally, it's just everything. Honestly, I thought I
Speaker 2: have won the lotto. That's how I felt.
Speaker 1: There's no prizes for guessing what came next.
Speaker 2: Every year we have a massive bonfire at our farm.
Speaker 2: We spend a whole year building it. It's usually around
Speaker 2: August or September. And so this particular year, which was
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, so we were coming out of COVID lockdowns, etc.
Speaker 2: It's probably the first big gathering that we'd had. Matt
Speaker 2: went and asked my parents if he could marry me,
Speaker 2: and they said yes. My mum and dad loved him.
Speaker 2: And then the next morning we were all hungover Dusty
Speaker 2: and he just rolled over in bed and he said, hey, babe,
Speaker 2: do you want to get married? And I said absolutely,
Speaker 2: And then we started planning this amazing wedding which we
Speaker 2: had on the property. It was always a dream of
Speaker 2: Matt's family to have a wedding at the farm. So
Speaker 2: it was one year after we got engaged, pretty much
Speaker 2: to the day that we had the wedding, and we
Speaker 2: had this big sea through Marquee under the stars. We
Speaker 2: got married under two gum trees. We had the best
Speaker 2: night and we had our wedding dance to the Pretender's
Speaker 2: song I'll Stand by You, and the lyrics to that
Speaker 2: song became so important in what was to follow in
Speaker 2: our love story. Very shortly thereafter, because Matt's mum got
Speaker 2: very sick. It took a while for us to work
Speaker 2: out what was wrong, but she was diagnosed with scleroderma,
Speaker 2: which is an autoimmune disease and it basically builds up
Speaker 2: collagen around your body and affects your immune system. She
Speaker 2: was in and out of hospital and it was a
Speaker 2: very stressful time and Matt and I really came together
Speaker 2: as a team. She spent a lot of time in
Speaker 2: bed and we thought maybe she was depressed, or because
Speaker 2: she was so active before, she was always feeding chooks
Speaker 2: and doing gardening and just always at parties. She would
Speaker 2: be at parties to the early hours of the morning.
Speaker 2: But all of that stop. She didn't want to come
Speaker 2: out anymore. And then Matt's half brother, so Colleen's son, David,
Speaker 2: He had a tough life and had druggen alcohol issues
Speaker 2: and he died at the age of about fifty three.
Speaker 2: So that was obviously a really hard time, but little
Speaker 2: did we know what was to follow there. About six
Speaker 2: weeks later, I came home early from work one day
Speaker 2: and Matt had been out during the day cutting firewood
Speaker 2: because he was due to have his tonsils out that week.
Speaker 2: We would never usually leave Colleen at home alone, just
Speaker 2: because in case she or you know, one of us
Speaker 2: was always there. And I got home from work and
Speaker 2: Matt said to me, Ugh, the old chook, that's what
Speaker 2: he called her. The old chook has let the fire
Speaker 2: go out in the house. And I said, Babe, when's
Speaker 2: the last time you have checked on her today? And
Speaker 2: he said, I better go down and do that now.
Speaker 2: And I said, I'm right behind you. And I was
Speaker 2: just putting my farm clothes on, and I was two
Speaker 2: paces behind him, and we came down to the house
Speaker 2: and she was actively dying, and Matt just screamed out
Speaker 2: to me, called ambulance.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: I tell you what, if there was ever someone you
Speaker 2: wanted in your corner and a crisis, like a real crisis,
Speaker 2: that was an absolute machine. He just scooped his mom
Speaker 2: up out of bed, put her on the floor, and
Speaker 2: we just went out at CPR for about f forty
Speaker 2: five minutes. We had to keep going till the ambulance arrived,
Speaker 2: and that took a really long time. And when she
Speaker 2: was pronounced dead, Matt was in the fetal position and
Speaker 2: he let out his primal screen and it was just
Speaker 2: the most horrible thing. You see, his heart broke when
Speaker 2: he lost his mom. What I saw in that moment
Speaker 2: was like a five year old boy. That's what I
Speaker 2: was looking at, a little boy who lost his mom
Speaker 2: following the death of his brother and then losing his mom.
Speaker 2: He'd lost his dad in twenty eleven, and it was
Speaker 2: a really hard time and we'd only just really been married.
Speaker 2: We didn't know why she died, and we couldn't really
Speaker 2: get any straight answers and we eventually got the coroner's
Speaker 2: report and it revealed that she had overdosed. So we felt.
Speaker 4: Bad that we had intervened in the way we had,
Speaker 4: but we.
Speaker 2: Had to obviously, but she was ready to go. The house,
Speaker 2: the farm, the property itself felt so scary, just heavy
Speaker 2: and dark after she passed away. And the one thing
Speaker 2: I will say is the community, the brotherhood, their wives,
Speaker 2: everyone just wept in and a good friend of mine
Speaker 2: pulled all the curtains down, pulled all of the bedding off.
Speaker 2: Anything that could be washed got washed, got cleansed. But
Speaker 2: there was a real heaviness over the property, which really
Speaker 2: sort of set the tone moving forward. So we had
Speaker 2: to launch straight into and obviously we didn't know why
Speaker 2: she died, and so we were trying to figure that
Speaker 2: out and navigating her estate. And sadly, Matt has another brother,
Speaker 2: but their relationship dissolved with the finalizing of the estate,
Speaker 2: so he also lost his brother during that process, which
Speaker 2: was just tragic. So how did we cope. We winged it.
Speaker 2: We just had to muck in and get the job done.
Speaker 2: And I did a lot of work helping Matt to
Speaker 2: regulate his emotions because he really even just every day inconveniences.
Speaker 2: If two of them happened once, he would get really frustrated,
Speaker 2: and so I spent a lot of time trying to
Speaker 2: help him regulate and calm him down. And he would
Speaker 2: always be so gracious afterwards and say, oh, baby, help
Speaker 2: me so much, thank you, And he would just the
Speaker 2: big smile would come back, and we'd head out into
Speaker 2: the paddic or we'd hit with poor a drink, but
Speaker 2: we just mucked on, you know.
Speaker 1: We just.
Speaker 2: One foot in front of the other was our mantra.
Speaker 2: We had a really difficult time. He lost his horse's
Speaker 2: best friend passed away. In this He was very strong,
Speaker 2: but when he would get upset and he would really cry.
Speaker 2: Seeing such a big, happy guy just cry, it was
Speaker 2: really hard. It was just awful. And we were looking
Speaker 2: forward to bigger and brighter pastures every year years. We'd say,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three is going to be our year, babe.
Speaker 2: What twenty twenty four is going to be our year?
Speaker 1: They promised each other, for better or for worse. What
Speaker 1: they hadn't realized when they made those vows was just
Speaker 1: how soon they would also feel the true gravity of
Speaker 1: their wedding song. Even in your darkest hour, I will
Speaker 1: never desert you. I'll stand by you. Then, less than
Speaker 1: two years after Colin's death, something happened to Amy through
Speaker 1: which she would need Matt to stand by her.
Speaker 2: I felt really sick. I got sepsis and I was
Speaker 2: being told I was fine, and I ended up within
Speaker 2: a day from going into septic shock. I had multiple
Speaker 2: major surgeries over the space of eighteen months. Matt was
Speaker 2: so angry that this could be happening to me and
Speaker 2: that he didn't know how to fix it. Nobody was
Speaker 2: listening to me, and he kept taking me to the
Speaker 2: city to demand them to look at me and do
Speaker 2: some tests and find figure out what was wrong. And
Speaker 2: I just really got gas lit. And he felt that
Speaker 2: he just felt injustice over it. In and out of
Speaker 2: hospital because we weren't getting answers and major surgeries that
Speaker 2: led to complications. I was in a wheelchair for a
Speaker 2: period of time, and I really just lost that that spuck.
Speaker 2: He couldn't come into the hospital. He was too angry,
Speaker 2: and so I had made it clear that, you know,
Speaker 2: my expectations were that he would hold down the ford
Speaker 2: at home, and he was struggling to do that at
Speaker 2: that point. His ability to cope with daily inconveniences really
Speaker 2: impacted the way the house was being able to run.
Speaker 2: It made me worry for Heidi because she would call
Speaker 2: me in hospital and say, Mamma, Matt is not happy tonight.
Speaker 2: And it made me frustrated because I was the one
Speaker 2: that was sick, but I was still satellite parenting the situation.
Speaker 2: So I felt like, in a way I needed something
Speaker 2: from him that he wasn't able to provide me with,
Speaker 2: which was, I guess, really difficult on top of the pane,
Speaker 2: and psychologically I was not in a good place. I
Speaker 2: was really struggling to, I guess, connect with where.
Speaker 3: Matt was at.
Speaker 2: I started building up a resent there that you know,
Speaker 2: even as much as I was communicating those things, it
Speaker 2: was almost like he would get overwhelmed just by me
Speaker 2: saying that, and so to de escalate the situation, I
Speaker 2: guess I was still cracking on. Even when I was
Speaker 2: in my wheelchair, I was still cracking on, and I
Speaker 2: was really questioning where my person had gone. I guess
Speaker 2: in a relationship having resent but also loving someone, those
Speaker 2: two things can coexist, and it's a very difficult space
Speaker 2: to navigate. In particular when you're physically unwell, but when
Speaker 2: you're mentally unwell as well, your mind will tend to think, well,
Speaker 2: where do we go from here? You know, there's only
Speaker 2: so many things I guess that one person can take.
Speaker 2: And we kept going back to that I'll stand by you,
Speaker 2: those lyrics, you know, like I've got your back, But
Speaker 2: it was very hard to acknowledge that love that was
Speaker 2: the undercurrent through all of this.
Speaker 1: They were also dealing with the hows and whys around
Speaker 1: what Amy had gone through and whether it could have
Speaker 1: constituted medical malpractice.
Speaker 2: Matt was adamant that I pursue investigations on the matter,
Speaker 2: even though I was still fighting for my life. He
Speaker 2: was angry, and so we started couple's therapy to help
Speaker 2: with the communication piece and also to make an informed
Speaker 2: decision about whether or not that would be a good
Speaker 2: idea for me or us as a couple. I was
Speaker 2: having individual therapy. It came out pretty early on in
Speaker 2: the couple's therapy that Matt wanted to seek individual therapy
Speaker 2: as well. And actually my psychologist told me that there
Speaker 2: was a mental health master class being held in the
Speaker 2: city which was free. He wracked up in his work
Speaker 2: cute and he got out and he said, I'm here
Speaker 2: for the mental health talk. And the psychologist said, well,
Speaker 2: this is embarrassing, Matt. You're the only person to show up.
Speaker 2: And he said, but it's fine. We get to have
Speaker 2: a chat just the two of us. And this psychologist
Speaker 2: would go on to be an important part of the story,
Speaker 2: but Matt had an hour and a half with him,
Speaker 2: and this psychologist specialized in men's mental health, so he
Speaker 2: had a way of phrasing things in such a way
Speaker 2: that Matt could relate to. He came home and he's like,
Speaker 2: things are on the up, you know, And he was
Speaker 2: just sort of replaying the way that the psychologist had
Speaker 2: explained things to him. I think just the way he
Speaker 2: was able to describe to Matt and create analogies for
Speaker 2: him of mental health being like looking out the windscreen
Speaker 2: or looking at the dashboard when you're driving. You need
Speaker 2: to have an accurate balance. It's a juggling act of
Speaker 2: how you sort of If you spend all your time
Speaker 2: looking at the wind screen, you wouldn't know what speed
Speaker 2: you're going, for example. But if you only looked at
Speaker 2: your dashboard, then you wouldn't see other cars and you'd
Speaker 2: have an accident. So he had a way of explaining
Speaker 2: these analogies that made sense to Matt, and I was
Speaker 2: so happy. I just thought, Okay, everything is going to
Speaker 2: be okay. And I had no idea that this would
Speaker 2: happen to me two weeks later, fast forward two weeks
Speaker 2: as part of the investigations that Matt desperately wanted me
Speaker 2: to do, Monday was the deadline to submit all the
Speaker 2: evidence to lawyers regarding my medical issues and preparing that
Speaker 2: kind of evidence and more paperwork, and that was such
Speaker 2: a big body of work. And I had told Matt
Speaker 2: that I needed the whole weekend uninterrupted to do that.
Speaker 2: You know, babe, just just have a weekend whar you're
Speaker 2: chill and the kids are looked after, and I'll just
Speaker 2: be there plowing away through my spreadsheet. He didn't know
Speaker 2: how to use technology, so he had sausage fingers and
Speaker 2: he's boiler maker, and he was very, I guess self
Speaker 2: conscious about his lack of technology skills. And he could
Speaker 2: have helped me, if it is sat with me for
Speaker 2: five minutes. I could have told him how to name
Speaker 2: file names. But the point was it was just easier
Speaker 2: if he Because there's a lot to do on the property,
Speaker 2: and so it was going to be easier for me
Speaker 2: if he was just doing that, but he kept coming
Speaker 2: in to my office. I was like a toddler that's
Speaker 2: wanting to reach out to its mum. You know, hey,
Speaker 2: I need help with this quote. Because he had started
Speaker 2: his own business by then, which was going really, really well.
Speaker 2: And I reminded him that this quote wasn't due till
Speaker 2: the following Friday, and that I would be with him
Speaker 2: at three pm on Monday when this work was submitted,
Speaker 2: but then there would be something else, and he was
Speaker 2: just buying out for my attention, and he wasn't, I guess,
Speaker 2: his normal bubbly self. It was manifesting as he was
Speaker 2: angry at me, but I think he was actually angry
Speaker 2: at the fact that he couldn't assist and he felt
Speaker 2: like he was letting me down and he didn't know
Speaker 2: how to fix it. On the Monday, I went to
Speaker 2: drop Heidi at school as I usually would. It's quite
Speaker 2: a drive and I came back and Matt was on
Speaker 2: the four wheeler on the road and he looked happy,
Speaker 2: you know, And I still had to complete this deadline, right,
Speaker 2: So I went to my office and he I was
Speaker 2: working all day. He was he had his clipboard and
Speaker 2: his glasses on, and he was walking around fabricating stuff.
Speaker 2: And he had his GP appointment at twenty past three,
Speaker 2: which was to get the mental health plan so that
Speaker 2: he could continue working with the psychologist from the masterclass.
Speaker 2: When he got off the phone, I could hear that
Speaker 2: he was whimpering, and so I stepped up from my
Speaker 2: desk and I said to him, baby, are you okay?
Speaker 2: And he said, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. And I said,
Speaker 2: do you want to just come into my office like privacy?
Speaker 3: And he just switched.
Speaker 2: He went from being sad to his eyes doing this
Speaker 2: thing that I'd never seen, you know, that vacant looking
Speaker 2: down at the floor. I was being really calm, but
Speaker 2: he just said, I'm over it. I'm over it. And
Speaker 2: he was yelling at me, and I said, what, babey,
Speaker 2: what are you over? I like, are you over? You
Speaker 2: know the legal stuff? Your work, the marriage will tell
Speaker 2: me more own. He said, I just need to go
Speaker 2: for a walk. In the couple's therapy, we'd made a
Speaker 2: verbal contract that me regulating his emotions wasn't good for
Speaker 2: me and I needed to stop doing that. So he
Speaker 2: made a verbal contract that when he needed to go
Speaker 2: and self regulate, he would say, I'm going for a walk.
Speaker 2: We would do to have a couple's therapy on Zoom
Speaker 2: at four o'clock. So this I'm over and I'm going
Speaker 2: for a walk was about twenty to four, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: he's going off for a walk and he'll circle back.
Speaker 2: And he didn't come back, and I was so angry.
Speaker 4: I thought, how dare you you know?
Speaker 2: That morning I had bought the makings for our favorite
Speaker 2: family meal. I then went to cook this dinner. And
Speaker 2: I'm still angry because he hasn't shown up, and he
Speaker 2: hasn't answered his messages, and he hasn't been online for
Speaker 2: an hour or so. At this point, I text him
Speaker 2: tease ready and didn't hear anything, and put dinner on
Speaker 2: the table and heid he said, Mama, can I go
Speaker 2: fun match to me? And something came over me and
Speaker 2: I said, no, baby, I'm going. It was raining and
Speaker 2: I walked outside and I walked up to his shed
Speaker 2: and there was probably one meter gap. You can see.
Speaker 2: The light was on, and I think my subconscious experience
Speaker 2: what I was about to see before my body and
Speaker 2: my eyesight was ready to accept it. So I actually,
Speaker 2: when I walked in, I looked to the right, which
Speaker 2: is sort of a storage area where a car is.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't likely be there. But then I looked to
Speaker 2: the left.
Speaker 3: And I him.
Speaker 2: I felt like I had sunscreen over my eyes. I
Speaker 2: couldn't see. I had my phone on me, and I
Speaker 2: called Triple zero and we all know that I've done
Speaker 2: CPR before on his mum, but there was no CPR
Speaker 2: that was required. The next thing I knew, some neighbors
Speaker 2: rocked up, but then Matt's best friend, who's a policeman
Speaker 2: and has attended many suicides before, he ran up and
Speaker 2: he just went, oh, mate, no, And then you just
Speaker 2: saw his training switch on and he went into police
Speaker 2: boat and he just said to me, fine, something to
Speaker 2: cut him down with.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: The next thing I remember is being inside with the
Speaker 4: ambulance people who tried to check me to see if
Speaker 4: I was okay.
Speaker 2: I'd been through the whole death at home thing before,
Speaker 2: so I knew that we were going to be interviewed
Speaker 2: and separated by the police. And I said to the
Speaker 2: police I had a disagreement with him, this is my fault,
Speaker 2: and they said, everybody has disagreements Amy. When he hung
Speaker 2: up from his GP, the last thing you saying to
Speaker 2: his GP was I just can't handle.
Speaker 4: What's happening to Amy. So I felt like it was
Speaker 4: all my fault. That was the one time I didn't
Speaker 4: regulate his emotions and I stuck to the verbal contract
Speaker 4: we had.
Speaker 2: Made, and a backfire so badly. I remember all of
Speaker 2: the whole brotherhood and all the wives were there within
Speaker 2: a flash, and they were all patiently waiting for me
Speaker 2: to be the first one to go into the shed
Speaker 2: to say goodbye before they took him away. I don't
Speaker 2: remember this, but apparently I went in and kissed him
Speaker 2: on his phone, and then I'd remember just patting him
Speaker 2: like you would an acquaintance. We had a beautiful funeral.
Speaker 2: I got a coffin which was custom printed with photos
Speaker 2: of the girls all over it, and I promised i'd
Speaker 2: buy him a Harley for his fiftieth birthday, but he
Speaker 2: didn't make it to fifty, so I got him a Hollyharse,
Speaker 2: and the Holly Hearse drove to the service. So he
Speaker 2: was just this coffin with pictures of his girls all
Speaker 2: over it on a side car of a Harley and
Speaker 2: it was the best worst day of my life. Both
Speaker 2: the girls spoke at the service. They were only thirteen
Speaker 2: and fourteen at that time. Sally wrote a poem about
Speaker 2: her daddy and how she never got to say goodbye
Speaker 2: and if she only had five minutes, and Heidi did
Speaker 2: a really beautiful speech where she made a few jokes
Speaker 2: like I even got to drive your new car before
Speaker 2: mom did. And I didn't ask the girls to speak.
Speaker 2: They wanted to speak. And I made this.
Speaker 5: Video which was so perfect and so tragic, and it
Speaker 5: was just all these memories, including video.
Speaker 2: With audio of him being with his girls and with
Speaker 2: his friends, and I really wanted to honor the person
Speaker 2: he was. And the psychologist from the masterclass before the funeral,
Speaker 2: I rang him and I said, I'm too scared ask
Speaker 2: you this because I'm afraid you'll say no. But can
Speaker 2: you please be your time to come and talk to
Speaker 2: the brotherhood about mental health because the day after Matt died,
Speaker 2: there were about thirty people on our property for weeks
Speaker 2: and they were working through their grief, just fixing stuff
Speaker 2: and swearing at Matt under their breath. But one thing
Speaker 2: that became clear to me is that a lot of
Speaker 2: them had had thoughts of suicide in the past, and
Speaker 2: so I called this psychologist and I said, can I
Speaker 2: pay you to come and talk to the brothers and
Speaker 2: I'll put on some sausages and some beer. And he said, oh, come,
Speaker 2: but you can't pay me. And so he came and
Speaker 2: did his master class in our country town and the
Speaker 2: whole was full of people. And so it went from
Speaker 2: the one on one with Matt he had in the
Speaker 2: city to this room full of men just searching for
Speaker 2: connection and answers as to why Matt had gone. And
Speaker 2: that was just trying to give that back, was one
Speaker 2: of my ways of trying to pay it for it
Speaker 2: and make Mats find some meaning and purpose. I bought
Speaker 2: a Bonzie tree and I got a piece of steel
Speaker 2: from MAT's shed, and I carved the piece of steel.
Speaker 2: I engraved it with the words you are valued, needed,
Speaker 2: and loved, which those words are what we should say
Speaker 2: to our men every day, because they don't know how
Speaker 2: to they might not necessarily realize that. So I presented
Speaker 2: that in front of all the blokes, and I was
Speaker 2: so happy to see everyone there, and I even brought
Speaker 2: Matt's ashes in. We came back in an hour and
Speaker 2: they were still going, and they were still going an
Speaker 2: hour after that, and it felt.
Speaker 1: Great, and it went further than Matt's friends, the community
Speaker 1: and the brotherhood. When Amy got around to selling one
Speaker 1: of Matt's old cars, she had an interaction that could
Speaker 1: only be viewed as a sign from above.
Speaker 2: I did a lot of research as to what I
Speaker 2: would value that at and I stuffed it up and
Speaker 2: put online way too cheap, and just had dozens of
Speaker 2: people messaging me straight away. I knew I'd made a mistake.
Speaker 2: And anyway, this guy messaged me, this young bloke, and
Speaker 2: he said, mate, take it down, it's too cheap. And
Speaker 2: I messaged him back saying thank you, and I gave
Speaker 2: him the sort of a high level picture of what
Speaker 2: had happened. And he wrote back to me the next
Speaker 2: day and he said that he'd been thinking about it,
Speaker 2: and he said that I actually saved his life. And
Speaker 2: he said, but he'd never considered what mess he'd be
Speaker 2: leaving behind for his family. So I think that even
Speaker 2: though people call me brave for talking about Matt's story,
Speaker 2: I don't feel like it's ove. I feel like it's necessary.
Speaker 2: And this one interaction on marketplace of a guy that
Speaker 2: was just looking out for me. You know. I just
Speaker 2: think that Matt's greatness is living on even after he's gone.
Speaker 1: While Amy was able to find these silver linings in
Speaker 1: helping others, they of course were in the darkest of clouds.
Speaker 1: Her grief is still raw and the heartbreak and gravity
Speaker 1: of her loss ever present.
Speaker 2: I felt like, as a surviving partner, I had a
Speaker 2: responsibility to carry other people's grief because he chose. But
Speaker 2: I understand now that he didn't choose it. I understand
Speaker 2: he wasn't him in that moment, and I know that
Speaker 2: he didn't plan to leave us. It's just he was
Speaker 2: actively making plans like getting his mental health plan and
Speaker 2: running his business that day.
Speaker 3: Just in that moment he.
Speaker 2: Couldn't deal with it. And unfortunately, I think with suicide
Speaker 2: it's like another flavor of grief. And I think, as
Speaker 2: with all grief, losing your partner or husband, you don't
Speaker 2: just lose the partnership and the other person, you lose
Speaker 2: yourself in the process. You just put one foot in
Speaker 2: front of the other and you wing it. If something
Speaker 2: breaks down, you go to TikTok and you celebrate your wins.
Speaker 2: It is so scary sitting with your feelings. That nighttime
Speaker 2: before I go to bed, I sit under the stars,
Speaker 2: and I'm right in a journal and I'm doing an
Speaker 2: insane twenty hours of silence challenge to raise money for
Speaker 2: mental health, and I just keep myself busy. But I
Speaker 2: make sure that I am in regular so I'm in
Speaker 2: therapy once a week. And because I was already being
Speaker 2: treated for PTSD following my illness, I've got like a
Speaker 2: complex PTSD thing going on. So I keep in touch
Speaker 2: with my doctors and make sure as much as possible
Speaker 2: to try and care for myself, which I'm still got
Speaker 2: my l plates on it that if I'm being honest,
Speaker 2: but I am learning. I mainly just I mainly just
Speaker 2: miss my best friend and I'm really lonely in the quiet.
Speaker 2: Matt used to talk a lot. He never shut up,
Speaker 2: actually he was so and now it's just quiet, and
Speaker 2: I sort of think I miss you, and I'm sorry
Speaker 2: that I'm sorry that I don't get to hear you
Speaker 2: buzzing in my ear.
Speaker 3: I'm not angry with him.
Speaker 2: I try and feel him in the wind and in
Speaker 2: the land. And you know, when I'm listening to the
Speaker 2: horse's grace, I look for.
Speaker 3: Him, and.
Speaker 2: I feel his big love energy when he even when
Speaker 2: he's gone, like when his mom died, it was scary.
Speaker 2: I've never once felt sad. I just feel the forty
Speaker 2: acres of big love. And we'll get there because we
Speaker 2: have to. I am sad, but I'm safe and I'm
Speaker 2: functioning and I'm showing up and I'm going to work
Speaker 2: every day. But I'm not okay. But what is making
Speaker 2: it better is these beautiful this beautiful.
Speaker 3: Army I have around me.
Speaker 2: It's not just about me being strong. I'm being ware,
Speaker 2: being held up by everyone around us, and that makes
Speaker 2: me okay. It makes my heart happy because.
Speaker 3: I know that we're not alone.
Speaker 1: Everyone has an Ex's a Minti Media production and proudly
Speaker 1: part of the Muma Mea Network. This episode is written
Speaker 1: and narrated by me Georgia Love and produced by Linda Scott.
Speaker 1: If you have a story you'd like to share, email
Speaker 1: podcast at momameia dot com dot au. You can support
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Speaker 1: and leaving a five star review