Within four days of laying her son to rest, Sharlene Baldock saw her daughter walk down the aisle.
It was March 2021, and her son Guy had died in a car accident at just 28 after running off the road near the rural Victorian town of Minyip, where the family lives.
"Our daughter [Alexandria] was going to cancel her wedding, but we said, 'No, Guy would not have wanted that', and I think we needed it as a family, we needed something happy," she says.
"We had our son's funeral on a Tuesday and our daughter got married on the Saturday. There were a lot of people at [both]."
Alexandria set up a photo of Guy on a seat at the wedding. Guy's young son Dane was also there.
This was just the start of how Guy's family keeps his spirit alive: Sharlene, a Victorian police officer, now runs a cafe in Minyip.
Its name is Guy's Coffee Cafe.
How it happened
Guy was a member of Minyip's Field and Game Club, and was returning home from a shoot with them when the crash happened.
A deluge of emotions washes over Sharlene as she recalls the event — loss, disbelief, and guilt among them.
"He rolled his car, and he didn't have a seatbelt on," she says.
"We always told our children that whatever you do, you put your seatbelt on whenever you get in the car. And that was stringent; we were so hard on them when they first got their licences.
"So I have no idea why he did not because if he had he would have been here today."
Before he got behind the wheel for the last time, Guy came to Sharlene and her husband Michael's house in Minyip. She saw he was tired and offered to drive him home.
"But he said he was OK … so he ended up driving home. I tried to get him to stay the night but he didn't want to," she says.
Guy fell asleep at the wheel and ran off the road after overcorrecting.
"Every day as a mother, you try to protect your children … and I failed that day … and I have to live with that," Sharlene says.
"That's why I've done the cafe, to keep him going. It's in his honour."
Healing through coffee
Sharlene, originally from Mildura, is still a police officer but has been on leave since losing Guy. Her husband and her brother are also both serving officers.
A former colleague of hers had to tell her Guy had died, and her son-in-law, also a police officer in Horsham, found out through the police radio.
Sharlene initially converted a horse float into a coffee trailer before a bricks-and-mortar cafe in Minyip went up for sale.
"I went for a walk one day, and I was passing and the owner was in, so I called in and saw him … and 5 minutes later, I bought a cafe," she says.
"It was a spur of the moment thing."
The cafe has been open since last October.
Minyip – population 500 — is along Victoria's Silo Art Trail.
With tourists a regular feature in Minyip for these reasons, and her son's name and face so prominent in the cafe, Sharlene inevitably gets the question, "Who's Guy?"
"I just say Guy was my son that I lost two years ago, that's all I say," she says.
"I had a lady come in last week, and she asked who Guy was, and I told her, and she also said she lost her son in a road accident.
"And she said it changes you as a person, you are never the same person. And that is very, very true."
The ripple effect
Every new road death reminds Sharlene of Guy's passing.
"It just brings back memories. It's raw," she says.
This year has been particularly bad. In Victoria, 172 people have lost their lives, 33 more than by the same time in 2022.
The toll includes a four-in-one collision near Hamilton.
There have also been serious bus crashes in Eynesbury, west of Melbourne, and in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.
Sharlene hopes that, in response, highway patrol officers become more visible on Victorian roads, and people have conversations with their loved ones about road safety before they drive.
"If you don't have your seatbelt on, if you use your mobile phone, everything happens in a split second, and you can't change it," she says.
"You can't turn it back. Even though you want to, you can't, and it's not worth losing a loved one for something so stupid.
"[It] is something that we all need to do anyway. It's against the law not to have a seatbelt on. It's against the law to use your mobile phone while you're driving."
Sharlene isn't sure if she will ever go back to policing, but she hopes to have the cafe for the rest of her life.
"I don't think it's a weight off my shoulders, but I just feel like having the cafe keeps him alive."