Kiddo and I picked Tress up from the airport around 8pm on Friday night and it was great to have all 3 of us – 4 including LBJ – in the apartment that night. As always, it didn’t matter where we were. It was the same small apartment where I have often been alone and miserable. As long as we were together it felt great.

Saturday morning after breakfast while we were getting ready to go and attend a property inspection in Latham, Tress said she read a breaking news alert. There had been some shootings in Paris. As I turned on the television, the horror of what happened began to unfold.

Morte Morte

Earlier this year – maybe in Feb/Mar – I had turned my facebook to an idle mode of some sort and changed my id to Morte Morte. It was in the wake of all the senseless deaths and killings at that time. Shootings in the Charlie Hebdo publication office in Paris, suicide bombings killing dozens in Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia, shootings in mosques in Pakistan and elsewhere, the list goes on and on.

In the midst of my search for work and dealing with redundancy – being alone for the most part – these senseless killings depressed me. I guess when you’re busy running on the daily treadmill grinds, reading these horrific incidents become easier to deal with when you have people you can talk to, digest, process and land on some mutually held albeit disconsolate ground. When you read these things alone and life prospect isn’t all that flash having been made redundant with no new role in sight, I withdrew into a “why bother” mode.

We went to a Chinese place in Macquarie and had yum cha around noon on Saturday. Dumpling Inn was just next to a bookshop known as the Asia Bookroom, which we visited and Kiddo bought a book. The lady manning the shop is a British who married a Malaysian and lived in Singapore for many years. She – Lynette – said she had been reading Rehman Rashid’s Malaysian Journey as well as another book on the BMF scandal. I said to her I worked for a lawyer (Chooi) who was tasked with investigating that scandal. It was weird having a conversation with a stranger in Macquarie ACT, on matters so close to what was once home. The conversations over yum cha on the Paris attacks – as we checked on our phones for updates – and that conversation with Lynette helped me deal with the shootings in a far less negative way but like many, those events stayed and disturbed me through the weekend.

All three of us went to the Good Shepherd Anglican church in Curtin on Sunday, after which we went to Fyshwick for lunch. We then came home, talked to Kiddo about her plans, played cards, then went out to Canberra Centre for a bit of window shopping. Then it was back home again, for more cards. We had the TV on as the Kiwis fought back on a lifeless wicket at the WACA in Perth, to put up a fight against the Aussies. IT was good to see, after they were thoroughly beaten in the first Test in Brisbane.

Later that evening, we walked Kiddo to church in uni. LBJ came along and then continued walking to where Kiddo’s graduation ceremony would take place. We mentally prepped how to bring Mum and Sim around when they visit on the week of the ceremony.

We’re nearing another milestone. As I mulled over and over again about whether Kiddo would get her PhB and what next after that, and what I would do work wise in the months/years ahead, I kept coming back to the ongoing theme of waiting on God. I had climbed out of my Morte hold/hole clutching onto that theme and I guess it would remain an ongoing lesson in the days ahead. Not just for me but also Kiddo and Tress, who now at this very moment, continues to deal with the challenges of transitioning into a new role, having left Myer a month ago after more than 10 years there. I hope Tress and Kiddo comes along on my journey on waiting on the Lord, before ascertaining the next move. Only then can we confidently deal with life’s harshest challenges such as dealing with those senseless deaths in Paris over the weekend.