On Monday morning I caught the bus into work and in between contemplating the week ahead on Women’s Agenda, our final week of publishing for 2014, my mind was vaguely pre-occupied with Christmas. Presents for my daughters’ day care teachers, a car registration that is due, secret Santa gifts and packing for our holiday, were a few of the details I was mulling over.
Barely two hours later those things were rendered entirely meaningless. Just a few kilometres from our office a gunman was holding a group of innocent Sydneysiders hostage. We all now know how tragically that 16-hour ordeal ended.
It is terrifying to contemplate and impossible to comprehend, marked by the fact it was both so ordinary and yet completely extraordinary. How perfectly ordinary it is to collect a cup of coffee before work. How extraordinary it is that something so innocuous would prove to be so dangerous.
Aside from the unimaginable trauma endured by the surviving hostages and their loved ones, two families have lost beloved members. Two sets of parents have lost a child, brothers and sisters have lost siblings, three children have lost their mother and two men have lost their partners. Countless more family, friends and colleagues are reeling from the same loss. The same unforeseen and unfathomable loss.
To say that it puts so much into context sounds trivial and trite. But after everything that unfolded on Monday and the early hours of Tuesday, how could it possibly not?
How often do you reflect on the fact that arriving at work safely or making the return journey home is something to think about? Let alone feel thankful for? How often do you properly count the simple blessings – having a family intact at the dinner table, children to cuddle good night, partners to kiss hello, friends to call, work colleagues to turn to? They are, in some ways, the little details that occasionally get lost amidst our daily lives but, as became so painfully obvious this week, they are the only details that really matter.
I wish those blessings could be restored for the families and friends of Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson. That we could wind back the clock and change the path of history. That this Christmas they could have their loved ones sitting amongst them.
The tribute at Martin Place which began as a few bouquets on Tuesday and has grown into a mountain of flowers seems to capture the sentiment of an entire city that feels the same. In virtually every way we can’t do anything: we can’t erase the trauma or turn back the clocks or bring the victims back. But we’re unwilling to do nothing. So we are visiting Martin Place and laying flowers and doing whatever we can to ensure Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson did not lose their lives in vain.
I wish that the details which occupied my mind on the bus earlier this week could still seem even vaguely significant, for if it weren’t for this week’s siege they would still seem that way. But they’re not. Presents and work projects and holidays are not meaningless but they’re hardly significant are they? Lives did not need to be lost to remind any of us of that but this week lives were lost. In remembering Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson this Christmas let’s dwell on the only details that matter: the people we are lucky enough to live beside.