Son’s wish was granted

Paula Hicks lost her son in a motorcycle accident. He was 20. The pain will never fade, but Paula was able to fulfill a wish

For Bendigo mother Paula Hicks, the pain of losing her son Broden last August in a freak motorbike accident will never fade.
“I don’t think those memories ever go away,” she says, of the night she held her lifeless 20-year-old in her arms.
“You learn to file them to the back.”
Unlike many, however, she’s confronted her grief, head-on.
“A couple of weeks ago I said ‘Life, if that’s the best you can do, I’m not gonna break ... with a few expletives in between!” she laughs.
“There are no tricks to the trade, everybody grieves differently, everybody has their ways and means of getting through.
“I’ll pop his jumper on, it’s just like having a hug.
“It doesn’t matter what your tragedy is in life. You make a choice.
“You can make the choice to say ‘I’m going to keep living’ or you can say ‘this is just too hard’.
“Don’t get me wrong, there are some days when it’s just too hard, but you just have to get up and keep going, because the world doesn’t stop when you’re having a bad day.
“You’ve got to keep living.”
Paula is better prepared than most to deal with loss; over the past few years, she’s lost three family members.
“We’ve had quite a few deaths in our quite close knit family,” she says.
“In the space of three years, we’ve lost somebody each year.
“But it’s life, it’s what happens. He (Broden) died doing something he loved.”
That day, August 2, 2010,  stands out the most.
It had been her son Corey’s birthday, although neither he, nor Paula, could have imagined it would be the last time they would see Broden alive.
“I remember the last time I saw him, he looked like an angel, with a grin on his face that said ‘I’m okay’,” she remembers.
Hours later though, around 5pm, her son Kurt burst through the back door “swearing and carrying on”.
“It went very quiet and the next thing I know, Katrina, my daughter-in-law, was standing at the front door,” she says.
“She always walks through the door, but this time she rang the doorbell.”
Paula knew something bad had happened.
“She was standing there crying... she said ‘I’ve got something to tell you, there’s been an accident, Broden’s dead’,” Paula remembers.
“I said ‘No, this is not right’, and she said ‘I’m sorry, he’s dead’.
“I said ‘That’s ridiculous’, but she burst into tears.”
After calling her mother, she retreated to the relative sanctuary of the bathroom.
“I sat on the lid of the toilet and I rang my partner,” she says.
“He said he’d be there in a minute, and that minute seemed like years.”
They eventually went down to Bendigo Health, but found out her son was still at the crash site.
A few tried to stop her from going.
“I had to know he was safe,” she says.
“I said ‘I will walk if I have to’, because I knew I couldn’t drive.
“I could barely move, let alone drive a car.”
Making her way to the site, she eventually found her son.
“I gave him a hug, I had to be sure he was okay,” she says.
“That may sound a bit strange, but I needed to make sure he was safe.
“I couldn’t tell you what I told him... I put a blanket around him, to keep him warm.”
Hours beforehand, Broden and Corey had been riding through the bush when Broden clipped Corey’s handlebar, flipping him into the path of a tree.
“Apparently the last thing he said was for Corey to get an ambulance,” Paula says.
“His last few minutes with his brother totally crushed him, he went through something that nobody should ever go through.
“His last image of his brother is an image nobody should ever have.”
Corey is handling the loss of his brother much better these days.
“He’s doing what we all need to do, to live,” she says.
In the days and weeks after Broden’s death, Paula could not help but keep an eye out for Broden.
“I still look for him,” she says.
“I take my youngest to school, and we drive past Broden’s work place (Gary Clark Roofing)... and we always look.
“I know he’s not there... I might see somebody who looks like Broden, who has similar features, I sometimes think ‘I’d love to walk up and give you a big hug’.”
Her memories of her son are of a boy who had a go at everything, whether it was sport or learning musical instruments.
“He was life smart,” she says.
“All my boys are life smart, they have lived a lot in their short time.
“Normally whatever he had a go at, he was good at.
“That’s not a mother being biased, he was.”
Despite the tragedy, she hasn’t stopped her children from riding motorbikes.
“They love doing that. Somebody told me ‘If they had of drowned, wouldn’t they be able to shower anymore?’.
“I found that quite insightful, it made me chuckle, I’ll hold onto that one.”
Through it all, Paula has come to understand it’s important to know your family’s wishes, if the worst were to ever happen – Broden had always wanted to donate his organs. However there wasn’t enough time in his case.
“It was easier to make decisions, knowing that Broden had already made choices,” she says.
“It takes away a lot of the pressure. None of the pain, but it takes away a lot of the pressure, when you lose someone.
“You don’t want to be second guessing yourself.”
A few Saturday nights ago, one of Broden’s wishes was carried out when a benefit concert was held to raise money and awareness for organ and tissue donation. It also would have been his 21st birthday.
“I did stand for a few moments and I could see him up there, having a dance,” she says.
“Although he couldn’t donate his organs, we are donating his last wish, some awareness and some money.
“His last wish was granted in a small way.”
Paula’s story is one chapter of Book of Life, a collection of stories by people touched by organ and tissue donation. You can read the stories at www.donatelife.gov.au

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