The 2012 murder of Jill Meagher still feels fresh in most Australian’s minds. But no one more so than her husband, Tom Meagher, who would have celebrated his 10th wedding anniversary with her over the weekend.
Taking to Facebook, Tom shared an image of Jill from their wedding night, penning an emotional open letter to his bride, who was taken away from him – raped and murdered just 400 metres from the home they shared – four years after their 2008 wedding.
“Only five weeks ago I stood in the Wicklow mountains where we were married, looking up at the canopy in the woods behind the grounds, as I have done many times in the six years since her death,” Tom wrote.
He went on to speak openly about the devastating acts that are committed against women daily, saying that he is kept awake at night by the space in between the two extremes of good and evil.
“The polar contrast between Jill and her killer are so clearly bookends of the extremity of good and evil that it sometimes feels like an ancient tragedy played out in real life. But it’s the gaping spectrum in between those two opposing ways of living that chills me more,” Tom explained.
“I can hold the polarities of Jill and Bayley [Adrian Bayley, the man who raped and murdered Jill in 2012] in my mind, as light and darkness, as good and evil. It’s the deliberately inscrutable, seemingly unreachable void that exists in between to prop up that darkness that keeps me awake at night.”
“In a culture where the death’s of most women are not newsworthy, are so commonplace that they are seen as incidental, expected and simply inevitable, he certainly does represent the extremist wing… of the hateful and pervasive ideology of male sexual terrorism, but it’s the everyday spectrum of male violence that disturbs me even more.”
Tom finished the heartfelt and passionate post with a message to his wife: “Slainte Jill. You were a warrior for love, life and liberation Thank you for consistently and persistently teaching me how to live, how to think, how to embrace love wholly, and to bear witness to the fire you lit in me and so many others in your short time on this earth.”
“You are loved at every moment of every day.”
You can read his full tribute to Jill here.
