KAREN Bell sits on a small lounge in the back room of her parents’ Bega house, the morning sun streaming through the window, her eyes red from lack of sleep and tears.
There is a large pile of photographs on her knee and she methodically lifts each one, staring at it lovingly before placing it next to her.
Each picture brings memories of her children so senselessly taken from her in the murder-suicide last week at Pericoe.
Beside her are scrapbooks, each with photographs of special days, many with dates made from coloured paper that surround the pictures marking the days of her children’s short lives.
There’s Bon’s first birthday, Maddie when she painted her face, and Jack with his sister and brother.
“I’m just trying to get through as best I can, trying to get through each day,” she says.
“I’m up and down and the feelings come and go.”
Seated nearby is Tom, her brother who is also suffering from lack of sleep.
Tom says he is not sure how he feels and struggles to speak.
“I have all sorts of feelings, but I don’t know how to describe them,” he says as he glances at his sister.
“I’m numb, it’s as if there’s nothing there.”
Karen’s mother Rosalie sits down opposite Tom and remembers the children coming to visit most Tuesdays.
“Maddie loved my jelly,” she says with a smile.
“I’d make it before they came and she’d always ask for it.”
Rosalie says she would sit and talk to the children about all sorts of things, then they’d go outside and play in the garden.
She glances through the window, her voice trembling.
“It’s just hard to think I won’t see them do that any more.”
Harold Bell, Karen’s father, has been sitting in the backyard behind the shed enjoying the solitude, and the quiet of the morning.
“Listening to the radio,” says Karen.
Harold, clearly emotional, comes inside and sits beside his wife.
“Devastated,” he says when asked how he feels as a father and grandfather.
“Just utterly devastated.”
There are vases of flowers on the table and cards of sympathy dotted about.
None seem to make any difference, although they are welcome.
“I am so grateful for all the support I’ve had,” says Karen.
“People have been wonderful.”
Tom tells her about the children at Towamba School forming a big heart as they stood near the bridge at Pericoe – their own poignant tribute to school friends they were missing.
“I did distance education from Queanbeyan with the children,” she says.
“But the kids went to Towamba School and they were all very close.”
Karen’s sister Sandra is cleaning; a spray here, a wipe there.
She stops wiping and her voice breaks as she speaks about how she feels.
“It’s as though something has reached through my chest and grabbed my heart and ripped it out,” she says.
“There’s nothing left inside, nothing.”
Karen looks at each as they speak, absorbing their words, hearing their pain and mixing it with her own.
She knows, as do all the family, there are more difficult times ahead.
She is not sure how she’ll cope with it all.
“I’ll just get through as best I can,” she says again and keeps looking at her photos.