My love for Sydney

A happy Sydney moment - our engagement party in 2012.

Today, I'm writing to you from Sydney, Australia, where I'm in town visiting my in-laws for an early Christmas celebration.  I'm one of those lucky widows who has wonderful, supportive parents-in-law. Our already healthy relationship only grew stronger after Dan died, as we found comfort, strength and support in each other.

Sydney has always held a special place in my heart.  I was born here and even though we moved to Queensland when I was only five-years-old, I've always loved visiting family and holidaying in this beautiful city.  When I met and fell in love with Dan, who had moved to Brisbane for work, I was very excited that I would have an excuse to spend so much more time here and was welcomed into his Sydney life by family and friends alike.

I have some beautiful memories of being here in Sydney with Dan, including cruising around the harbor on a ferry for his 33rd birthday; our engagement party in a beautiful old pub; Christmas Day and New Year's Eve in 2012.  He loved this city, it was part of him. I know it was a difficult sacrifice for him to settle down in Brisbane but I'm just lucky he loved me more and, in his words, his home was now in me.

Like most of Australia, I was going about my day on Monday morning when I heard the news bulletins about the gunman who had taken 17 hostages in a popular cafe in the middle of the city.  My first reaction was to run through mental check list of all our family in Sydney and work out if any might have been in the area that morning.  I had spoken to Dan's parents the night before and quickly worked out that they should have all been safe.

I then sat glued to my computer for the whole day and late in to the evening, flicking between the live stream of commentary from different news outlets as I tried to understand what was going on and how such a terrifying situation could have occurred.

When I finally switched off and went to bed, I laid quietly in the dark, with tears running down my face, while I thought about those families who wouldn't sleep that night, as they waited with heavy hearts for news of their loved ones inside the cafe.  My heart broke as I wondered what news I'd wake up to in the morning.  I felt so very scared, not only for those hostages but for our country.  How would this change us?

I know that many parts of the world live with this kind of fear constantly.  Terrorists and extremists kill innocent people every day. I am lucky to live in Australia where these feelings of fear are so alien and strange but this thought didn't make me feel any more ok - it only made me sadder.

I couldn't stop wishing Dan were here.  To hold me and make me feel safe. To talk to about what was going on and what this would mean for a city we both loved. Dan was the most open-minded and tolerant person I'd ever met. Not only did he not care about people's colour, culture or religious beliefs - he didn't even notice they were 'different' to his own. He was the personification of love and acceptance of fellow man - with the kindest of hearts and purest of intentions.  He was everything right with the world and everything I wanted for our future.

I tried to think of what he might say about this siege in Sydney and I knew his heart would be aching with pain and confusion too.  We would have probably clung to each other and cried together when we woke on Tuesday morning to hear that two innocent lives had been taken over night.

One thing that would have most definitely been different if Dan were here is that I wouldn't have been able to understand or relate to the grief of the families of the two victims who wouldn't be home for Christmas.  Because I wouldn't have been through my own traumatic life-altering loss.  I would have felt deep sorrow for them in a 'Oh gosh, I can't imagine what they must be going through right now' kind of way.  But, I wouldn't have really been able to empathise with any meaningful emotion.

Instead, I was able to very easily put myself in their shoes and recount some of the first-moment grief they would be feeling.  That numbness and physical sickening. The thoughts of how unfair it was that their wife or son were the ones to be killed.  How random that this murderer had walked into the same cafe where their loved one happened to be working or enjoying a morning coffee.  How quickly their lives had been torn apart without any chance to say goodbye. The strange, almost trivial things that pop in to your mind in those first moments of shock - 'what will we do with her Christmas presents'?  Or 'but he has an appointment with the doctor/hair-dresser/accountant next Tuesday that he's supposed to go to'?

As their hearts tore open, I held these families in my own battered heart and thought about the long painful road of grief that lay before them. And as my plane touched down in Sydney on Thursday night I hid my own silent tears behind my sunglasses.

When I walked out of the terminal to meet Dan's parents, I clung to them when they embraced me, taking in the feeling of their arms around me. I had been looking forward to that hug, that connection with another heart that shares your pain and beats with the same ache for the person you're missing.

I hope that the families of the two Sydney siege victims at least find some comfort in the arms of those who share their pain. Because there are hundreds of thousands of arms reaching out to them from all around the country today.

Wish You Were Here, Uncle Dan

My usually quiet, peaceful and tidy sanctuary of a home has been turned in to a messy playground for two boisterous little boys this weekend... and I'ver never been happier to have my orderly life turned up-side-down.

You see, Dan's sister is visiting from interstate with her husband and two young boys, aged two and four, and it's just been lovely to have his family so close.

All of Dan's family and most of his friends are based in Sydney, where he grew up and lived until moving to Brisbane for work, a year or so before we met.  Being more than 1000 kilometres away it would be easy to feel quite isolated in my mourning of him.

However, I'm one of the very lucky widowed people who have been embraced and supported by my  in-laws.  Over the past (almost) 16 months since his death I've had regular phone calls (at least twice-weekly), more than half-a-dozen visits and have been made to feel like I'm a firm and permanent part of their family.

The boys were aged 18 months and three years when Dan died.  The oldest one remembers him well and the youngest recognises him from photos and understands he was an important person.  There have been a few challenging moments with questions about death and heaven and, as is the way of children, these are usually blunt and come at unexpected moments.

To be honest, I love talking about Dan so this doesn't upset me, instead I like it when they bring him up.  I'm grateful that they know he was important and will grow up aware that they were very loved by him.

We answer the questions as best we can, but it's a fine line between satisfying their curiosity and not giving them information that will scare or confuse them further, given their young age and limited understanding of how the world works.

It's making me think about how difficult it will be when the time comes where the questions will develop, as they grow, into queries about how and why he died.  Ultimately it will be their mum and dad's decision on when Dan's suicide is explained and knowing what wonderful parents they are, I know they will handle this will tact and honesty.  My heart breaks knowing how painful this will be, both for my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, but also for my nephews.

Dan adored these boys so much that he would get tears in his eyes when he spoke about them.  When we visited Sydney, he was bursting with excitement to see them.  His phone screen-saver was a photo of his nephews, because he missed them so much; and he couldn't wait to be the best uncle possible as they grew up - playing sports with them and giving them advice about girls.  

Seeing what good uncle he was helped me fall in love with him (not that it was difficult) and I couldn't wait for him to become a father to our own children.  I look at his nephews, one of whom inherited the same beautiful chubby cheeks and mischievous, sparkly eyes as his uncle and my heart breaks that I will never meet our children.  I'm sad that these boy won't know their uncle and we won't get to give them cousins to play with as they grow up.

I wish he'd gotten the chance to be a dad.  I wish he'd been able to live the life he deserved.  I wish he had of been here with us over the past couple of days as we visited the zoo and played at the beach, to help me spoil our nephews and give their weary parents a bit of a break.

There are so many ways to miss him.  Today, I miss Uncle Dan and my tears are for myself, for him and for our beautiful nephews who will miss out on so much by him not being here.

On that note, it's time to pull myself together because I can hear little feet running through the house and sweet, little voices calling out 'Untie Becca, it's time to go to the markets!'