We understand now Vadim belongs to a much wider family than our own.

Both a police family and a broader family of the Victorian community.

The words, care and support we have received from Vadim’s police family, and the community, has been extraordinary.

The grief of our family has been shared with a caring community, and we have been uplifted by the support provided, at a time of incredible grief.

Our family feel a deep connection and gratitude for all of your care, thoughts, support and kindness.

It has brought comfort to our family since Vadim's departure from our lives, at Porepunkah: an Aboriginal word meaning the meeting of two rivers.

The Two Rivers:

Grief is a river that now runs through all our lives, unmapped, shoreless, the nature of mourning.

The death of Vadim, our son, Sacha's brother and your brother in this noble family of blue has brought us together today.

For there are now two rivers flowing in our lives connecting us forever.

The river of loss and grief and the river of life and love.

This river of life is always flowing forwards to join with the vastness of the eternal ocean.

So too are we all destined to return to the eternal.

No energy is ever lost; it is simply transformed.

Death is the only promise held.

The transient moving towards the eternal

We have the capacity to hold both emotions: grief and joy, sorrow and gratitude, sadness and happiness, absence and presence.

While we are grieving the trauma of a young life that was taken from us, we simultaneously hold in our hearts our happy memories of his life lived with passion, enthusiasm, generosity and pure love of life with his trademark ever present infectious smile.

We also feel gratitude for the life we still have the grace to live now.

Grief is not something we can simply choose to leave behind.

It is a powerful and overwhelming emotion, and we need to find the grace to flow with it; to allow ourselves to be carried by its current when we need to.

But there are moments when we can choose which river we wish to turn towards: the river of grief, which can drag us down into the muddy depths of sorrow; or the river of life, where we can consciously harness the winds and fill our sails with all that is joyous.

We cannot stop the river of grief from flowing through us.

But we can learn to flow with it, and, when we are ready, to lift our eyes towards the river of life and allow ourselves to be carried forward.

When two rivers meet, they merge, blending their distinct waters, each carrying different stories.

There are times when the rivers join, as we experience both emotions of grief and love simultaneously.

There are times the rivers will part travelling over new terrains.

Just like a confluence where two rivers collide, the initial meeting of deep grief is turbulent and churning before it finds a broader, steadier flow.

The river does not become wider by forcing one current to disappear.

It becomes wider allowing both currents to coexist.

As we too must embrace the grief and the love.

For I have learnt to see that grief is the mirror of love.

We are living in two realities: the physical and the cosmic.

It is said that this grief is love with nowhere to go.

So let us all give it somewhere to go, let it sense gratitude for what we have.

Let the river teach us that we can hold both stillness and storm, flexibility and strength, become a rapid or a quiet reflecting pool.

Let the stars remind us that light is revealed in the darkness.

To have known the light that is Vadim has brought us all much laughter and kindness.

We all now walk the banks of the river of life hand in hand.

Our family feel a deep connection and gratitude to all of you here today, one year after Vadim’s departure.

We are especially grateful to those who were with Vadim in his final moments on earth, at Porepunkah, the aboriginal word for the ‘meeting of two rivers’.

Here, at this meeting place, we honour both rivers: the river of grief for the life we have lost, and the river of love for the life Vadim gave us.

And so, as we continue along the river of life, we carry Vadim with us: in our memories, in our love and in the light he left behind.

Two rivers, meeting in one place, flowing together towards the eternal.