The worst day

I remember watching the TV show 24 Hours in Emergency. Essentially it's a show based in an English hospital emergency department. It follows the patients, from toddlers with something stuck in their ear canal, to serious accidents or diagnoses. It interviews families, friends and the hospital staff. One episode featured a family which had to be taken aside and told the news that their loved one had a terminal illness. Speaking to camera, the doctor explained that their role can be helping people through the worst day of their lives. Giving life changing information and watching the sadness and grief envelope them.

I thought of this concept of the 'worst day in someone's life' this week. Realising how ambulance crews and police arrive at scenes to find something terrible has happened. I was thinking about this after the news that one of my uni lecturers had been arrested for allegedly murdering his wife. I was shocked and left speechless. Although, as an online student I was taught by a wonderful tutor, all the learning materials for the digital media topic featured his face. His mantra is that you 'learn by doing', and therefore the  subject materials were videos and podcasts meant to inspire us to be brave and put ourselves out there. He wove his (daggy) personality and humour into his teaching. He interacted with students via Twitter, creating networks and online communities. He read my uni blog post and awarded me his favourite gif - Fred Savage of the Wonder Years giving the thumbs up. I loved this teaching approach so much I enrolled in another of his subjects next semester. But suddenly a woman is dead and he is in custody.

I went to Twitter and saw posts from my old tutor and other teaching staff. They were trying to ensure students were connected to support, and keep this semesters students up to date with what was happening. There isn't a precedent for how to continue teaching a subject when the lecturer has been arrested and all the teaching material features his face. I saw other people commenting at the shock of how someone they liked, respected and had learned so much from could also be this 'other' person. Some students wanted all interactions with the lecturer deleted from their Twitter feed, while others demanded all mention of him be removed from the university immediately. A friend contacted me, saying colleagues of hers had previously worked with this academic. They were trying to see how they missed this potential behaviour in someone they considered a friend. Everyone was in free fall. 

And another woman in Australia was dead. 

I've struggled to understand how an argument one Saturday night can change everything. How any argument can escalate to a stabbing. How this can happen with young children in the house. How a split second can change everything to become the worst day in so many people's lives. Acts of violence are like rocks thrown into millponds. A splash followed by ripples radiating outwards. Doing the research into Peter's biological Mum's murder (Iris) we looked through the files at the public records office. In it there was a transcript of the perpetrator talking to his mother while in police custody. It's a hard read. She is in disbelief that her 17 year old son killed their ex-neighbour. Someone she knew. She's sobbing, trying to understand how this happened. A woman brutally killed and the life of her child destroyed. Peter had already been adopted, which left his siblings to be separated and placed in foster care. Reading newspaper articles you saw the impact on friends and colleagues. The confusion and grief that this could happen. One moment of violence and the impact of the 'worst day' is felt by so many. The ripple continues outwards beyond the splash, further than we imagine.

People online want to change how these stories of domestic violence are reported. That we shouldn't focus on the 'nice guy next door', speaking of their achievements and humanising them.  I don't in any way wish to contribute to this. I'm just trying to process this news and document how I feel, and my personal reaction. There is a push to not mention the perpetrators name, and focus on the victim. Give a voice to someone who has been silenced. Focus on the loss rather than salacious details and clickbait headlines. I loved this post by Tarang Chawla on Instagram demanding coverage focus on the causes of men's violence and how we can stop it. His sister was murdered by her partner and he has experienced the way the press treat the victim and perpetrator in the media, especially if you are a person of colour.

Similarly, Jane Gilmore fixes newspaper headlines.  She removes the overly dramatic details from headlines and focuses on the facts. The suburb is fine...but a woman is dead. This is taken from her Instagram account.

You would assume that clickbait headlines and dramatic pull quotes are an internet invention, thanks to shortening attention spans and overwhelming access to information and the 24 hours news cycle. But the newspapers reporting on Iris's murder were equally dramatic. The sad reality is that violence is reported within a few inches on a page or screen. No-one takes the time to look for drivers or causes, and if they do it looks a lot like victim blaming. The two small children who witnessed the incident above will have their worst day documented with little care for their wellbeing. We need to do better. For the families and society. 

Something came up recently in my Facebook memories.  It was a snippet of an interview with Robert Webb, discussing his book 'How not to be a boy'. After the death of his Mother when he was a teenager, he  didn't come to terms with his grief.  He said how rather than feel emotions, boys are told to 'Man up', leaving them unprepared to actually deal with their feelings...except for anger. For some reason, men expressing anger is acceptable. Anger can often be a secondary emotion, as the initial emotion is too painful to process, so it expresses itself in another form. The short interview is funny and insightful and covers social expectations and emotional repression and how this trains men to not take responsibility for their feelings, leaving them unprepared for adversity. 

We need to stop the ripple of trauma. To stop people experiencing the 'worst day' which leaves one woman dead per week in Australia due to violence. We need to understand, except, acknowledge and feel our feelings. Illustrator Gemma Correll sums it up beautifully in her image for Mental Health America at the top of this post.