If I’m the camel’s back, then this is the straw…

I haven’t posted on my blog for a very long time (not since I was moved to this new address, in fact!), even though I have had reason to do so since getting engaged at Christmas time… more on that at a happier time!

The bushfires have affected many around me. Three of my colleagues in the university department that I work in lost their homes over the weekend. One, in Kinglake, I knew about on Sunday night because I was in contact with another colleague who is his close friend. I knew that he and his family (wife and six kids) were safe, albeit with a bit of worry about a possibly missing daughter at one point.

On Monday morning, I learned that two other colleagues had also lost their homes, one at Redesdale and the other at Healesville. A cloud of worry and concern settled over all members of the department the moment that news was heard.

Later that day, I learned that my boss’s brother in law’s family were missing. They still have not had any contact from them. It has been confirmed that their house did not burn down, but nobody is to be found at the property. It does not look good.

I also learned on Monday evening that the two sisters of a guy that I knew when I was at uni, because we led on the same Scripture Union camps and were part of the same wide circle of connection, also perished in the fires.

I have heard that a professor in another area at the university perished with his or her family. La Trobe has been and will continue to be deeply and profoundly effected by this tragedy.

It broke my heart further yesterday to hear that the sister of one of my friends from high school perished with her husband and her two daughters, one three years old and the other eight months old, in the Kinglake fires. I had seen this friend last at Christmas time, after years of no contact, and I heard her speak with such love and delight about her gorgeous nieces.

Tonight, I heard the news that I am calling the straw. The last straw. The final straw. The piece of information too close to home… A very old friend of my Mum’s, Rod, and his wife, Elizabeth, and their two teenage boys, James and Matthew, were caretakers at a campsite at Marysville and had just bought a B&B. Sadly, Elizabeth, James and Matthew did not make it out safely. May they rest in peace and rejoice with their Father in Heaven now. And may Rod, in time, find peace and solace in knowing that they rest there.

~ by pincushiondiary on February 11, 2009.