Sitting to write, I am at a loss for words and talking with others seemed little help as most just shook their heads in sadness and dismay muttering things about “what a tragedy”.
That gut response from people epitomizes how they feel when someone is seemingly pointlessly wrenched from our community and a hollow sense of all that arises when confronted with the fragility of life.
Jodie, 38, was injured in March last year when cycling on the Midland Highway, just west of Mooroopna, when hit by a car at the Turnbull Rd intersection.
The driver of the car, who was technically unlicenced, was sentenced to a month’s jail, suspended for a year and ordered to pay $10 000 to the Scott Peoples Foundation, a body set up following the death of promising Shepparton cyclist, Scott Peoples, who died in 2006 when also struck by a car.
The foundation was nominated by the Ridges family.
Jodie and I never meet, but the mother of four and I do have, or had, some similarities.
A road accident in December ’97 left me with a brain injury, and other difficulties and I too ride a bicycle.
Those two similarities seem unimportant compared to the overarching likeness – we both lived with hopes, dreams and ambitions; we, before Jodie’s death, were both compatriots in this great experiment called life.
My life was punctuated only by a semi-colon; Jodie’s, sadly, by a full stop.
It is about here that the words begin to evaporate and people, particularly men, turn to why and use reasoning in an attempt to fill the void in their understanding of such a wasteful death.
Women appear more willing to engage with the whole experience and within that work to psychologically understand the dynamics of death or injury, while men in a much rougher male approach simply want to eradicate the difficulty and return things to the way they were.
That said, many men can, however, be equally empathetic, but by tradition they tend to steer away from anything that might be somewhat emotional or, in colloquial terms, a little “touchy, feely”.
Life is loaded with heroics and while trained soldiers, firemen, police officers or even the likes of solo sailor, Jessica Watson, are not heroes, rather well-prepared people who take risks, I do consider that of those who unknowingly and unwillingly confront the difficulties that life thrusts at them.
Jodie’s husband, Scott, and their four children have had heroism hurled at them and unlike the solitary heroes in the movies, don’t let them stand alone, be their friend and in any practical way you can, help them piece their lives back together.
