By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
PAULA Murphy saw the police car pull up outside her house and knew instantly her daughter was dead.
“I had that sick feeling when something bad happens, when I opened the door I was telling them not to say it,” she said.
“The police don’t come to your door for anything else.”
One day Paula hopes to open her eyes and the death of her 20-year-old daughter, Maddison Murphy-West, will merely be a bad dream.
But the rational part of her brain tells her that will never happen.
Maddy was found dead at her Ahern Road home in Pakenham just over a year ago, on 23 October, 2013.
Maddy’s two-year-old son, Noah, is now without his mother, as homicide squad detectives continue to investigate the death.
“To tell you the truth, I’m still waiting to wake up from it,” Paula said.
“Every day when you first wake up, in the bedroom, you sort of don’t open your eyes properly and when I hear Noah on the intercom, or hear him yelling out or anything, you still … it’s just that split second, that initial thought of … and it just hits you.
“And I’ve got a lot of photos of her in my room, so as soon as I open my eyes, I tend to always be facing them anyway, and it’s right there in my face.
“You just take a big sigh, like – are you kidding me? It’s still happening? And it’s just … it’s horrible.”
In March, an anti-violence rally was organised in Maddy’s honour, after media reports emerged that she was allegedly physically assaulted in the year before her mystery death.
And as the Gazette this week launches its month-long White Ribbon campaign to help stop violence against women, Maddy’s family spoke of the grief that continued to torment them just over a year since the tragedy.
Paula said she spent the 12-month anniversary wishing the day would pass as quickly as it came.
“I just sat there hoping the day would go really fast, come and go,” she said.
“It was a horrible day.
“The boys have given us a lot of strength, they keep me very busy. It’s a good thing, it’s a really good thing – Maddy wouldn’t want me sitting around.”
The “boys” are Paula’s one-year-old son, Brydon, and Noah, who she now has custody of.
“Noah was calling me Mum, but I still call myself Nan. I don’t know why,” Paula said.
“A lot of people have asked me, and said go with it, let it go, but I’m not comfortable with that yet. I don’t know if I ever will be.
“I feel like I’m disrespecting Maddy.”
Paula can still see Maddy’s smile when she told her she would finally have a little brother, and Noah a life-long companion.
“It was just Maddy and I for so long, so when she found out she was finally going to have a sibling, she was so excited,” Paula said.
“Now I watch the boys playing sometimes and remember how Maddy would be there with them, she was coming over as much as she could.
“She said she couldn’t wait for our babies to grow up together.”
Paula wiped a solitary tear from her eye at the reminder of Noah and Brydon growing up without Maddy.
It explains why Paula is so passionate about the campaign to stop violence against women, as national White Ribbon Day approaches on 25 November.
“We want to let the girls know, and the guys, anybody that it’s happening to, that there is help,” she said.
“Don’t think that you are alone; don’t think there’s no one there that can help you.
“There is help.”
Paula has also found another source of help through keeping a diary, something she started earlier this year.
“That helps me sometimes, writing things down. I don’t say it out loud but when I’ve got a quiet minute to myself, and I’ve got something on my mind that I would love to say to Maddy, I just tend to jot it down now,” Paula said.
“At first I was a bit hesitant about talking about it because it’s sort of something between her and I, even though she’s not here.
“It’s a weird feeling and it’s hard to explain but it does help.”
Her diary, and a collage of Maddy that hangs on the wall, has become Paula’s solace.
“It was just jotting things down at first; I thought it might help get it out of my head right at that time because it just goes over and over, you can’t get things out of your mind when you go to bed at night,” she said.
“Brydon’s not a very good sleeper anyway so I’m up a lot, which I think sometimes is a good thing.
“I don’t have time to dream.”
