How has that much time passed? Our lives have carried on in the 10 years since MH17 was shot out of the sky by Putin and his cronies. We returned to Australia, then had another stint in the Netherlands, then returned again. My wife’s octogenarian uncle is thank God still with us, now in his 90s and still vitally interested in the people and world around him. But we think of all of those lives snuffed out – scientists, adventurers, children, families – who haven’t been with us this past 10 years, and we know without doubt that the world would be a better place if we could exchange the lives of the victims with those of the murderers. I don’t believe in capital punishment. I know that it would take a miracle for the lives of those miserable, narrow, petty nationalists, thugs, bully boys, grubs to have changed to even begin to approach the value of the lives they stole. The world suffered a great loss 10 years ago. If instead the perpetrators had just vanished without a trace, the world would be no worse off.

……………………

My wife’s phone rang at 3.19am. It confused me, because my alarm does not make that sound. Mostly asleep, I thought of the time when the noise would stop, and I could submerge myself completely. My wife was obviously also not conscious.

“What’s that?” I asked, innocently.

“My sister is trying to call me.”

“Oh.” With no sarcasm, I said “Maybe you should answer it”. I was being helpful. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Again, no sarcasm. Sleep is a type of drug.

I didn’t think, who has died?, the way I would back home. 3am is 11am there. Not a time when anyone should call us, but a safe time nonetheless. Then I kept hearing, oh no … oh no … oh no … And then, no, he’s here. He’s asleep. In the room next to us.

In a six week period, I flew the Amsterdam-Australia route with Malaysian Airlines three times. The first time, just before I boarded in Sydney, I heard the news that one of their planes was missing. I didn’t know what was happening, but that didn’t worry me at all. Air travel is safe. Statistically invalid though it is, if I reacted at all, it was only to think that if here had been a recent disaster, air travel was for the moment, even safer. Only at breakfast the next morning in Kuala Lumpur, reading a local paper, did I realise the extent of the tragedy, did the selfishness of my glib reaction sink in.

My next trip was back home a month later, on the noon MH 17 flight. We flew over the Ukraine again, just as I did a fortnight later as I brought my family to join me in Europe.

My wife’s octogenarian uncle, spry and fit and still travelling the world, has been using our home here as a base while he journeyed around Europe. He was travelling home on MH 17 on Friday. We had gone to bed that night not knowing that Thursday’s flight had simply been shot out of the sky, killing everyone. Our family in Australia suddenly worried that they may have had the date wrong.

Read on …