Last year I wrote about the deeply disturbing shooting incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the USA. The ripple effects of this devastating day for a small American community was felt as far away in Perth, Australia where I live.
I have never been to America; I didn't know anyone in that community but the loss of young children and their teachers in a shooting attack that no one saw coming made a big lump in my throat and heart appear; that in the weeks leading up to Christmas, parents innocently took their children to school then headed off to work themselves or possibly finished last minute shopping finalising travel plans and outings with friends and families over the festive period. Their day started out just like any other day, but it certainly didn't finish like any day that they had before, and will never be the same again.
Never did I ever consider it a reality my own country. To find the devastating news that two of the hostages held captive in the Lindt Cafe siege in Martin Place, Sydney, were killed along with their attacker.
It was a day that started out like any other business day in Sydney, but soon turned sour and, by the start of the next day, had the whole country and indeed the rest of the world in shock and disbelief that this has happened. People in Sydney going about their usual day, planning for the impending holiday period, summer lazily settling in over Australia, our favourite time of year just on the horizon.
Children said goodbye to their hard working mother, and none of them realising that she would not return home, ever, through no fault of her own.
The legacy of the siege of yesterday will have long lasting effects for our country and community but more so for the three young children now growing up without their beloved mother, too young to comprehend what she endured and why she was taken from them. So very sad and needless.
I live on the other side of the country, I was in no immediate threat with the siege, but my heart is still as heavy as any Australian that lives near or far from Martin Place in Sydney.
For the hostages that survived, the reliving of those tortuous hours, the things that must have been going through their minds, that will still go through their minds for the rest of their days. How will they process this and make sense of it?
The post-traumatic stress and survivor guilt (especially for the co-workers of the young man who also died) that will haunt them is immeasurable.
While we are all enormously grateful that it was only two of the hostages who did not survive this ordeal, what measure do we have for the years ahead of living for the survivors? Will they be able to continue to work, hold down relationships and be good parents to their children as they were before December 15th, 2014? Will they sleep through the night ever again, or not heave with nausea when ever they smell coffee brewing or see Lindt chocolates?
Stress triggers will be all around them. I hope that they have caring and patient partners, family and friends, who will walk every step of the way through their long recovery with them.
I am grateful to all the police and special services that swiftly put into action all the training that they had been perfecting for years in the unlikely event that they would ever have to implement. Like clockwork, policies and procedures were followed and the situation controlled, as best you can in this instance.
To all of the companies, hotels, buildings that also put their matching procedures into action that quickly got more people out of harm’s way to limit the risk to more lives, you all did a fabulous job and two innocent lives lost is probably a miracle in itself.
The greatest sadness of the last 24-hours is that as a nation nearly twenty years ago, we opened our arms to the man who was the perpetrator. After living in Australia for the 19 years, he could not see how much we revered our freedom and a life free from threats and terror; that mateship and looking after each other is a way of life for us. He lived and moved amongst us, yet turned on the country and the people who gave him a safe haven.
While on a much smaller scale, I somewhat get an inkling of what it must have been like in the wake of 9/11 - the disbelief and knowing that your country will never be quite the same again thanks a minority of radical individuals.
I mourn with and for my country.
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