Shocking tragedy that put Gold Coast mum on path to save lives
This mum has a devastating story to tell. It hurts to repeat it. But she does so again and again, to save other families the same pain.
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HARVEY Norman Gold Coast Women of the Year People’s Choice winner Melissa McGuinness has found her life purpose amid unfathomable tragedy.
She says, if she can spare just one family the grief she still grapples with, it’s worth endlessly revisiting the day her world crumbled.
Standing in front of a class of Year 12 students, Melissa starts by remembering Christmas shopping with her 18-year-old son, Jordan.
“It was a really lovely day, then I dropped him off at a mate’s place, I gave him a kiss goodbye and I told him I loved him,” she says. There’s a catch in her voice.
“He said, ‘I love you too mum’ and that was the last time we ever saw each other.
“That’s when I show them the news clip from the night of the accident.
“They see the horror of it and they realise I’m not just a grieving mother, I’m the perpetrator’s mother in an accident where he was responsible for the death of four innocent kids.”
The founder of YOU CHOOSE Youth Road Safety has told Jordan’s story to 45,000 high school students and she can always pinpoint the moment it hits home, see the chinks in those tough teen facades.
In 2012, Melissa’s smart, funny, affectionate son died in one of the most horrific car crashes in Gold Coast history.
He was speeding and under the influence of alcohol and cannabis when he collided with a stationary vehicle on the M1.
“He hit a car that had five innocent kids and only one survived,” Melissa says.
“Jordan was no saint but he certainly wasn’t an evil kid who set out to wreak havoc on the suburbs.
“He was a lovely kid, into his health and his rugby and surfing.
“He was the sort of kid who’d never leave the house without coming to me and giving me a kiss goodbye, which is why this whole story is so sad at the end because this is the legacy that he left.
“It doesn’t matter how great a kid he was growing up or the wonderful things that he did, at the end of the day he’s going to be remembered for his last action which was a horrendous, horrendous way to leave.”
Melissa revisits that moment over and over again, delivering her self-funded road safety presentations to up to 50 groups a year in the hope she can make at least one of those teens think twice, spare another family the agony of grief.
Running registered not-for-profit YOU CHOOSE with husband Peter, she still works four days a week so she can deliver a story “for the kids at 2am when they’re at a party and they might have made some bad choices or their friend has made a bad choice”.
“I didn’t necessarily set out to do this,” she says.
“This isn’t just a story about my grief, this is a story that encapsulates five other families and I think about those families and what Jordan did to them every single day. It keeps me awake at night.
“It was after a couple of presentations I did, it was the response from the kids – they engaged.
“At the end of the presentations kids will come and say, that could be me … that could so easily be me.
“Jordan’s story is just your everyday story of a teenage kid who made a series of poor choices that had catastrophic consequences.
“The response surprises me every time because normally it’s the biggest and gnarliest teen that will come up and give me a hug at the end.
“I got a lot of messages from parents saying thank you because I have a teenager that doesn’t want to talk to me about this sort of stuff, but they’ve come home from school all raw and emotional and they’ve opened dialogue about not just road behaviour, but how they never want to do anything that might leave their family or their loved ones like I am.”
The wounds are still raw, the tears always close, but Melissa feels like she’s moving in the right direction.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow as a mother,” she says.
“I don’t let Jordan off the hook for anything, but I’m a grief-stricken mother who absolutely loves my son and I still cry frequently over Jordan.
“It’s something I will never recover from.
“I’ve got this new normal and everything I do has this background filter of Jordan.
“When I stand up in front of those students, in some ways I almost feel like I’ve been given this gift of purpose and grace.
“Am I reducing the road toll? I’ll have no idea.
“It’s something you can’t measure but if there’s one person, one family that I spare the misery that we’ve gone through, the whole thing is worthwhile.”
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With goals to take her message Australia-wide, Melissa says donations to YOU CHOOSE are welcome.
“Right now we self-fund it because I don’t want to charge for this presentation, but if anyone wants to donate to our cause, commercial sponsorship would be fantastic,” she says.
“My husband and I want to take this nationally – it’s too important a story not to.
“If anyone wants to see the presentation it’s a matter of going to their school and asking them to contact me and I’ll organise some way to get there.
“Generally it’s years 10, 11 and 12 I like to present to because they’re on that precipice, it’s relevant.
“I can’t write Jordan’s wrongs. I can’t fix what he did, but it’s the next best thing of what I can do.
“This isn’t about me, but every time I do something like this I feel like Jordan is with me, like he’s in here going, ‘I’m so proud of you, thank you’.”
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