Honouring the legacy of Ben Austin

It’s hard enough dealing with grief when you’re an adult, let alone when you’re a kid.

Jace and Tracey Austin know all too well how hard it can be.

They lost their son Ben to a freak cricket accident in October.

The 17-year-old was at cricket training in Melbourne when a ball struck him on the neck.

Nine months on, the family is slowly healing, but for a while the parents were at a loss.

They had two other children to worry about, Ben’s younger brothers Cooper and Zach.

“From the outside they look fine, but they’ve lost their brother, they’ve lost their best mate,” Tracey told Deb Knight.

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“They don’t talk about Ben, and when we talk about Ben, which we do a lot, they pretend they can’t hear.”

Tracey spent time looking for counsellors for her boys to talk to, but it was a hard process to navigate.

“They’re wait lists for counsellors for the boys and I thought they need something now.

“I’ve just found it really hard to navigate, navigate when you’re in that early stage of grief, where should go, what to do.”

That’s when they came across Feel the Magic, a charity that helps families deal with grief, especially school-aged children.

“There’s no rule book for grief. Grief isn’t linear. We don’t get over grief,” Feel the Magic chief executive Gavin Fingleson told A Current Affair.

“But that isolation with the kids and the families, we bring them in with our psychologists and evidence-based programs where we teach them what their emotions are.

“We give them the skills with emotional literacy and give them a language to be able to talk to their parents, talk to other people.”

The Austins attended a day camp earlier this year and Jace said it started to get their boys to open up again.

“They saw that there’s kids younger than them that are going through what they’re going through.

“That really got them onto a step that got them going back into normal life.”

Zach said they even made a friend, and it was easier for them to talk to others their age they could relate too.

Seeing what their sons have gone through, sibling and childhood grief has become a passion project for Jace and Tracey.

In trying to find purpose, they have created a foundation to honour their boy “Benny”.

Then Ben Austin Legacy will raise money for Feel the Magic and The Compassionate Friends Victoria.

“We’ve got to change it and start even bringing it to its head and discussing it,” Jace said.

“Have some options or some strategies and do what we can to help because it’s a lonely, brutal world.”

They’ll also be throwing the inaugural Ben Austin Legacy Gala on October 9, which would have been his 18th birthday.

“We really want to make it about Benny’s friends and a celebration.

“It would have been his 18th, so that’s hard to think that we’re celebrating it without him here.

“It would have been huge, so we’re making it big and we’re going to honour his beautiful life.”

The gala will be held at the Glasshouse (home of Collingwood) in Melbourne with 450 of Ben’s community.

If you’d like to support the Ben Austin Legacy you can head to their website.

August is also Grief Awareness month and Feel the Magic is running its campaign Connected through the Stars, making sure no Australian child grieves alone.

For more information you can head to their website.