Without love there's no loss, without connection there's no grief. Life's wondrous and, at times, can be damn hard.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
For many, for any number of reasons - from disadvantage to poor health to seemingly terrible bad luck - it can serve up periods beyond the realm of happiness.
But for most of us such lows don't strike so hard, or are brought back into kilter by the emotional investment we make in those we hold close and hold dear.
IN OTHER NEWS:
That ebb and flow gives us the joy and fortitude to keep it all ticking along.
Any manner of these lived experiences though are irreconcilable with what was inflicted on the Meredith family in 1996 when they lost their clever, kind and beautiful Kim.
The brutality of her death, for a time, ripped out the heart of this community, but that doesn't compare though with a trauma that has forever marked the lives of her parents, Bob and June, and younger brother, Graeme.
Much of Albury-Wodonga knew nothing of 19-year-old's Kim slaying until late on the afternoon of her death, when footage of police searching for clues in Macauley Street, near where her body was found, began to lead the national news.
One network's 5pm bulletin opened with words on how a country town had been left shocked by a young woman's murder. And then the story was told - that town was Albury.
By then, Bob and June Meredith, beset with an unfathomable grief, had already gone through the terrible experience of formally identifying Kim's body.
Their hell might have been tempered with the early arrest of a suspect - a skinny bloke in a cap, his face pixelated, was on the front page of The Border Mail as he took detectives through the crime scene - but no one could really envisage what lay ahead.
For Kim's family, it led to year-upon-year of immense frustration as her killer's case bounced about the NSW judicial system.
Despite the immense sadness, the Merediths have always maintained a great dignity and decency - when they have had every good reason not to - as they have proudly told of their forever love for their daughter, a sister and their dearest friend.
