Instead her mother Vicki attends in her place, masking her heartache with a brave face.

If Brooke Richardson was still alive, her mother would never have faced the horror of having to identify her 20-year-old body at a morgue. 

Instead Vicki wakes every day, imagining what her daughter’s life could have been.

If only …

Brooke Richardson died after “just one little text” while driving on the Murray Valley Highway, near Cobram in Central Victoria.

Five years of praying, hoping and begging hasn’t changed that. 

Brooke is still a daily presence in her family's life.

So is grief.

Vicki still chats to her daughter, or rather images of her, and often slips between past and present tense when talking about Brooke.

“She was very bubbly, very energetic, she loved being around people and making people smile, people were everything to her,” she says.

“We were very, weirdly close and we were very similar – we were like clones virtually.

“When I think about her I can’t be sad, she just makes me laugh and makes everyone else laugh too.”

The years have not diminished Vicki’s loss.

She counts and re-counts the number of times Brooke use to text her – 25 times a day.

Something so incidental suddenly transforms into a precious memory to cling to. 

On December 4, 2012, Brooke woke up at her mother’s house in Mulwala, dyed her hair and ate breakfast before rushing to work.

It was an ordinary day, in what should have been a long line of ordinary days.

“She had to get petrol so she ran out the door and said, ‘See you later’,” Vicki says.

“Usually there’d be a hug and a kiss and ‘Have a good day’ but there was none of that on that day.

“That really sticks in my mind.”

At 8.45am Vicki was settling in to work when she received a call.

The 20-year-old’s boss called to say she had not turned up for work, and a car similar to Brooke’s had been involved in a serious crash.

The next few hours and days passed in a blur of disbelief, police officers and flowers.

A year before the crash, Vicki discovered Brooke had been texting while driving.

She sat her daughter down and spoke to her about the dangers of being distracted on the road.

Brooke stopped for a couple of weeks, but Vicki believes the allure of connection got the better of her.

Despite the all-consuming nature of loss and grief, time passes.

While Brooke will always be 20, her friends, parents and siblings go on – living and ageing.

“She never got married or understood what it was like to have a child,” Vicki says. 

“I’ll never be a grandmother to her baby.

“I went to her best friend’s baby shower and stayed 10 minutes.

“I went to the same girl’s wedding and said ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine’, but you never are.”

It usually hits hardest on “those special days” – Mother's Day, birthdays and Christmas.

“That’s when it really gets to me,” Vicki admits.

Five years on, the ripple effects of that day are still being felt in the lives of those who knew Brooke or live on the Border.

Vicki says Brooke’s 19-year-old brother has been too scared to get his licence, having seen first-hand the road’s deadly toll.

She says the woman who came across the crash still has panic attacks when ambulances pass her on the highway five years later.