How old was Michael
when he died?
Seven months.
Do you want to tell me
how it happened?
Or do you not want to tell me
how it happened?
Um...
Yeah, I'll tell you.
Okay.
So I woke up one day,
one night,
to give him his feed.
It was one o'clock,
two o'clock, feed
or whatever it was.
I turned the light on
to um,
do that.
And every morning,
every time,
he just squints his eyes, you know?
Because the light's too bright and
this time he didn't,
and I knew he was gone.
I knew.
So I rang the ambulance
and they're like,
do this, do that
and I'm like stop telling me
to do that.
You know what I mean?
And um,
yeah, they came over.
They rushed.
And he was gone,
they didn't even try to
resuscitate him or anything so.
Everybody's carrying their own
boulders, you know?
And
everybody's got their own pain
that they're dealing with so,
talking about, I don't really talk
about it to people.
I grew up in Mt Druitt.
It was abusive,
alcohol,
the home was um,
the home wasn't nice.
So I wouldn't call it
growing up,
I'd call it living there.
And that's when I started drinking,
smoking weed,
that's where it all kicked off.
Do you remember when you
found out you were having a kid
the first time?
Yeah, I was in jail.
And um,
when I was 23.
His name was Michael.
He died from SIDS.
Do you remember what it
felt like inside?
Emptiness...
It's not really a feeling,
it's a place.
You just can't...
you'll never get out of it.
Eventually Michael did have
more children.
Including this dude.
Is that good Keggy?
I got into early recovery
and um,
just recently a life situation and I
became a single full-time dad
to Keegan.
When you talk to Keegan
about the big brother that
he'll never meet,
how do you communicate that
with Keegan?
I tell him he's in the stars
so he's got a star brother.
I was in a dark spot.
No money,
can't pay the rent,
what am I going to do, you know?
I'm not going to be able to
care for him. I'm gonna have to
give him up.
Not a nice place.
I said let's go to the park.
There, pushing him on the swing
and trying to get out of my head
because seeing him smile,
makes me smile.
And I couldn't get
out of my head
so I sat down
and I said sorry mate,
I can't push you.
He gets the s***s
and -
Like every seven-year-old.
Yeah!
He's kicking around and
I'm just, I'm just not there.
I'm in my head.
He picked up these four rocks.
One for me,
one for him,
one for Zahr, my daughter,
and one for my wife.
He's like what about Michael?
And I said we'll leave that up
to the universe.
He starts digging through this bark
and he finds the rock.
It looks like a little face.
It's just a little face on a rock.
You turn it over and it's got
a Facebook logo and ...
this is weird?
Here it is, here.
That led Michael to a
Facebook group that he'd
never heard of before.
I thought I found some kind of
hidden treasure, you know?
Turns out I did.
It was like wow!
80 thousand people or something!
They paint rocks
then they go and hide them
for somebody to find.
This is the world of
rock dropping.
It's...
worldwide.
Think of it as an international game
of hide-and-seek.
To the person who hid this,
I just want to say thank you
so much for this.
We had no idea about this group
or what it was when we found it.
But this rock could not have came
into our lives
at a better time.
What it symbolises to us
goes beyond words
and it's just the light we needed
in this dark world at the moment.
As soon as I'd seen it
I had a thought, I had a feeling
from my son, like,
you know?
As weird as it sounds but,
it gave Keegan hope.
And when Keegan has hope,
I've got hope.
So we've got
620 likes.
Just went berserk!
A lady sent us a
rock painting kit.
They're the rocks, the paint
that a lady sent to us in the mail.
You want me to paint that?
Yes, and I'll paint that!
You know, another person,
complete stranger,
done a shop for us.
Done shopping!
Like $400 worth of shopping
or something like that.
And just the act of kindness
like, the act of wanting to make
somebody else happy,
they don't even know.
I wanted the person that painted it
to know that
they helped us.
And that is when we had
an idea.
We're going to meet the girl who
painted the rock for him.
For Keegan.
Feeling a bit nervous of going
to meet the people who painted
the rock.
Feeling nervous?
No.
You're not feeling nervous?
No.
Keegan's not feeling nervous.
So Keegan's got a thank you note
for the girl who painted the rock.
You going to give it to them?
Yes.
That's his way of saying thank you.
We've been up since 4 o'clock
in the morning.
Caught a train, a bus,
a plane,
a 100 kilometre car drive,
just to return this rock so
we're tired,
excited, happy,
anxious
and relieved.
That is correct.
It's correct.
How you going?
Jodie?
Yeah!
Michael.
Pleased to meet you.
You too, how are you going?
This is Keegan.
Hi Keegan!
This is Layla and Marley.
Marley, you're the one who painted
the rock!
Yeah!
Oh!
Your special rock!
It's gone a long way, hasn't it!
I just want to thank you
and also your daughter for
putting a bright light
in a dark spot.
He's been through a lot
his whole life,
he's been through a lot.
When he found it, it was like a...
It shone him, he was shining.
I hope that my girls can learn that
some small gesture that they can
do for somebody else
means so much.
I have no idea how it got from
Gosford,
to the park that you were at.
Some have been dropped
in Japan and New Zealand
and it's a mystery.
It shows me that the world
is not...
dark.
People do care.
People care about strangers.
You don't even know who the
person is they've given the rock to
or what it's going to do for them
and they care enough to do it.
It's just part of the magic,
I think like,
you never know where your rock's
going to turn up.