Losing Zoie: A mothers heart-breaking story of losing her 14-year-old daughter in a tragic school bus accident

By Karina Adams

Karina Adams, wife, mother of five and working in aged care, lived a happy positive life, in her home town of Ulladulla on the NSW South Coast. That was until Wednesday 1st July 2020 would change Karina's life as she knew it when her 14-year-old daughter Zoie was hit and killed by a school bus as she was leaving school.

Is it possible to be happy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karina Adams
• Release date: Apr 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645481211

Book preview

Prologue

When my daughter, Zoie, died, my whole world, as I knew it, fell apart. I had to learn how to live again when I really didn’t want to. I felt lost. I felt that my family and I were all alone and I couldn’t get real-life stories and information about what I was going through. I needed to know if there was a way to survive this horrendous pain.

There are many books on grief, but I struggled to find any true stories on child loss. I wasn’t interested in reading a book written by a professional, who had not felt my emptiness and heartache, offering helpful tips from a textbook to manage grief. I didn’t believe there was a way for me to get better, so I wanted to know how other bereaved parents survived the tragedy of losing their child, how they felt and what they went through. I guess I just wanted my desolation acknowledged. I wanted to know that there was someone else who fully understood what I was going through. That is what I hope others will get from this book.

I needed to know that I was not alone. That everything I was thinking and feeling was normal. I needed to know if life could ever be bearable again

It is every parent’s worst fear to have one of their children die before them, but no one ever truly believes that it will actually happen.

When the unthinkable did actually happen, I didn’t believe it for weeks. Being told that my only daughter had been hit by a bus and died was like something out of a movie. It was impossible to process. For months afterwards, I would tell myself that Zoie was just living overseas or on a long holiday, and that she would be back, because I just couldn’t accept that she was gone.

I hit the lowest of lows that I had ever felt. I was numb. Living in a dark fog. I thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse. Then I got to a point where I thought I was coming good. The days got a little easier. I cried less each day. Then I sank even lower again. I used every ounce of energy I had just to breathe. I see and hear everything differently now. Figuring out how to love life again, without my daughter, is the longest and hardest thing I have ever had to do. I don’t believe I will ever fully recover from that life shattering tragedy, but the days do get easier. If you are a newly bereaved parent, you have a massive challenge ahead of you and there is no easy way to get through it. There is no magic cure. It is just something you must do for as long as it takes. You have a long, dark road ahead of you. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. It won’t be a happy, triumphant victory at the end, just mere survival. I am living proof of that. This is the story of what I went through after losing my 14year-old daughter, Zoie, in a school bus accident.

1

YOUNG ZOIE

Mum and I have always had a close relationship. She knew I wasn’t happy and having relationship issues, so she and Noel cut their trip around Australia short to be with me when I had my baby. Mum and Noel were staying in a caravan park nearby in Tallebudgera on the Gold Coast in Queensland. They were to move into a unit on Saturday, 25 March.

One week before Zoie was born, I left her father, Nathan (for the first time), to stay with mum in the caravan. The timing was good, in a way, because Noel was away for a couple of weeks for work. With only the one bed in the caravan, mum and I shared it. I spent those few days relaxing in the Gold Coast sun. After a year of being unhappy, I felt relaxed, like I was on a holiday. The only downside was having to walk about 100 meters, in the middle of the night, to the toilets. I would roll out of bed as quietly as I could manage and waddle through the park with my huge pregnant belly leading the way.

It was four days before Zoie was due and I was in complete denial that I was in labour. I continued to go shopping with mum for the day and kept complaining that I had a pain in my stomach.

‘Are you in labour?’ mum asked me.

‘No. It’s not that bad’, I replied, ‘I just need some Panadol and a lie down’. Well, the Panadol didn’t work and the pain got worse.

‘I think I better take you to the hospital, just to check you out’, mum said.

So, at about 3pm, I got my prepacked hospital bag and mum drove me to the hospital. By the time I got there, was given a bed and the nurse had checked me over, I was 9 cm dilated. Zoie was born on Friday, 24 March, 2006 at 10:21pm. She was born with a full head of dark brown hair and had the brightest blue eyes.

Zoie was the perfect baby. She slept right through the night from eight weeks old and never cried; just gave a little grizzle when she was hungry. Zoie was a bright and smart child. In preschool, she knew all her colours, numbers, the alphabet and could spell her name.

I went on to have two more children with Nathan (Jacob and Tyson) before I left him for the third and final time. Zoie loved and adored her younger brothers. Zoie was like my shadow, always helping me with the boys and she became a little mum to them, sometimes getting a bit too bossy and I would have to remind her who the mum was.

I was a single mum of three, living in my hometown of Ulladulla, NSW, when I met Aaron. Zoie was 5, Jacob was three and Tyson was 11 months old. Aaron was great with them and bonded with all three instantly. Aaron and I were inseparable from the start. He has always been my rock. We just connected on every level. We share all the same family values. We have all the same interests and we want the same lifestyle. I had finally found the Prince Charming I had always dreamed about and thought was just a fairy tale. Aaron was slightly taller than I, had short dark hair and dreamy blue eyes that would sparkle when he looked at me. He often surprised me with a bunch of flowers and treated me like a princess. We shared the same dream of one day owning our own home and travelling around Australia later during our retirement. I honestly believe that Aaron and I are soul mates, like our souls were connected and we finally found each other again here on Earth.

Six months later, we were living together, got engaged and married two years later. Aaron has two children from a previous marriage, Charlie (5) and Riley (3). Six months after Aaron moved in with me, Charlie and Riley moved in with us too, as their mother was moving to live in Sydney, three hours away. She would be working full time and would have no family up there to help with the kids. Aaron and I felt that not getting to see them often was not an option, so it was a no brainer that the boys should live with us. So, just like that, my family of five became a family of 7.

We are an open and honest family. I like to encourage the kids to talk to us about anything, from school, friends, our family, sex, drugs; anything. As long as they are honest and respectful, they can say anything at the dinner table, without consequences. We tell of our highs and lows of each day. It’s a great way to get the kids to talk about their day. I often got asked what my biggest fear was, and I would always respond with, ‘Losing one of my children’. And it was. It is every parent’s worst fear to lose a child, but I felt deep in my soul that one day this would become a reality for me. I would randomly worry about it often and it would bring me to tears.

Zoie was an active, fun-loving girl. She loved our family camping trips. We would often go camping at Yadboro, which is a beautiful open camping ground by a freshwater river, about 20 kms into the bush. There was no power, phone service or facilities. There was just nature. I have been camping there since I was a toddler, with my family. My brothers and I have continued that tradition with our own kids. Zoie and her brothers would go out and play and explore, often jumping off a rock into the river. One of their favorite things to do was riding in the back of the Ute. The kids would stand on the back, always in the same spot, holding on as Aaron would drive them up the dirt road.

Zoie was never a sporty person, but she loved physie, dance and gymnastics. Zoie started physie when she was 5. I really enjoyed the physie days and I believe Zoie did too. Zoie competed in a few physie competitions. I would curl her hair and do her make up beforehand. She made it to zone once, placing in the top five. Physie was our mother daughter time. Zoie is my only daughter. With four loud, rough boys at home, I cherished our girly times.

At about the age of 10, Zoie changed to hip hop dance. She was a little uncoordinated at first, but soon picked it up.

Zoie had only participated in dance for a short while before she changed to gymnastics at about the age of 12. Here, she was in her element. It wasn’t so serious. There were no competitions. She could just go, have a bit of fun jumping and flipping around.

After years of being a mostly stay-at-home mum, in 2018, I started working part-time in aged care. I loved it and finally felt that I had found my