Batlow fire tragedy: Twin three-year-old angels laid to rest
The mother of twin girls who died in a horror house fire last month has revealed she sang Aisha and Lailani ‘one last lullaby’ as the three-year-olds were laid to rest in a pink double casket.
NSW
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In her raw grief Tanyka Ford searches her mind for someone to blame as she struggles with the enormity of losing her twin baby daughters in a fire that engulfed their home.
The scars on her forearms from smashing through windows are still visible three weeks on, but pale in comparison to the crushing blame she heaps on herself for failing to save Aisha and Lailani, 3.
The girls were monoamniotic twins — perfectly identical having shared the same amniotic sac and placenta — an extremely rare occurrence that happens only once in every 60,000 pregnancies. But their birth was even more special to Ms Ford.
“They were my miracle babies. After 15 miscarriages I was told I could never medically carry,” she said.
“Unless you’ve been a mother of twins you cannot describe what it’s like to have two babies kicking away in your stomach at the same time.
“I will forever bear the stretch marks they gave me.”
Speaking in hushed tones, it is clear she is struggling to make sense of the harrowing events of May 18.
The sisters died in a tragic inferno that started when they playfully removed a protective grill from the wood fireplace in the family home at Batlow and set light to highly inflammable material.
Ms Ford, 29, stepped outside to toss away a burning pillow they had been playing with when she found herself locked out with her six-year-old son Dominick.
“I tried to get in, the fire was too strong, I tried, I don’t know who to blame, what else we could have done to save them. It still doesn’t seem real, they were with me 24-7, I never left them for a second, I never got babysitters, I never went out … but they were ripped away from me in minutes. It’s a nightmare you try to process but you can’t.”
In her first interview, the mother of four says she is tormented with constant reminders of her boisterous daughters, who she laid to rest in a pink double casket at Tumut Lawn Cemetery in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains on Saturday.
Steeling herself before the funeral congregation, she sang her daughters one last song, Sarah McLachlan’s Arms Of An Angel, as they were lowered into the ground.
“Everyone asks how you are but I don’t know … there are no words to describe it,” she said. “It’s like when someone breaks up with you and you feel empty and broken but worse, it’s like something is missing.”
Ms Ford is tormented by the memory of being unable to get into the house through the back door that was forced shut by the sheer force of the blaze which tore through the home within minutes.
Screaming, she attempted to smash through the front door to get to her crying babies but it was bolted from within. Emergency crews eventually broke in but the little girls had succumbed to smoke and were found, holding hands, in a rear bedroom.
“I’ve got the scars from when I had them, scars from trying to save them,” Ms Ford said. “The nightmares used to start when you slept, now they come when you’re awake, you can see it all around, their smiles, their clothes, their giggles. And then there are birthdays, theirs is the sixth of Feb. It will never go away.”
She worries about the trauma’s impact on Dominick and hopes with counselling he will get better. She is planning to get counselling after the funeral but “I’m too afraid that once I let go it won’t stop”.
Ms Ford, 29, recalls defying medical advice to give birth to the twins. “I could only tell them apart through the different dummies they had from birth,” she said.
“I had the option to remove one to give the other a chance, one was smaller, but it wasn’t an option, I kept them both, they were born seven minutes apart, naturally, at 30 weeks.
“They were my rock, my everything, the most mischievous bubbly little tomboys.
“They loved it when I sang to them, the last thing I can do for them is sing them one last lullaby.”
