In a bid to protect her privacy when she returns home in rural Victoria, Shelley Kovco faced the media to take questions about her husband's death and the subsequent public inquiry that ended this week.
Mrs Kovco said she believed her husband's fatal shooting in his Baghdad barracks was an accident, and spoke of how difficult it had been to explain it to their two children — four year-old Tyrie and one-year-old Alana.
Mrs Kovco says she's looking forward to taking a much-needed family holiday, but feared their lives would never be the same without her husband.
"I will never get my life back to what it was," she told reporters in Sydney.
Mrs Kovco also revealed that she had had her husband's portrait tattooed on her upper arm to help keep his memory alive.
She said she felt she had been denied a chance to properly mourn her husband.
"But like I said, I don't think I will ever know exactly what happened ... I guess, until I catch up with Jake," she said.
Pte Kovco died on April 21 after being shot in the head with his own 9mm Browning pistol while inside his Baghdad barracks.