MH17 victims’ son grieves in his own way – by talking about Ukraine's suffering

2014/9/18 13:53:17

Australian Paul Guard lost his parents, Jill and Roger, when MH17 was brought down. But bringing their bodies home matters much less to him than honouring their rational approach to life and seeing a peaceful resolution to the conflict

 


From The Guardian 18, September 2014

 

Paul Guard knows he is unusual. There are expectations of how people are meant to respond when something appalling happens. There are rituals of grief, of outrage, of demands for justice. There’s a pattern to it. Politicians have their role. So does the media. So do victims.

 

Guard won’t go along with it. He won’t say that the deaths of his parents Jill and Roger when Malaysian airlines MH17 was shot out of the sky over Ukraine in July were any more significant than the deaths of almost 3,000 Ukrainians in the conflict.

 

He won’t say that the most crucial thing is to find the person responsible for firing a surface-to air-missile, which is believed to have blown up the commercial airliner, killing all 298 people on board. And he won’t say that bringing home his parents’ bodies is what matters most to him.

 

“I don’t have an emotional connection with the bodies,” he says in a hotel room in Melbourne, where he has travelled to witness his parents’ coffins being unloaded from a military plane from the Netherlands. The Guards were among the first of 38 Australian citizens and residents identified and repatriated. Once the Melbourne coroner issues a death certificate and releases them, Paul and his brother David will accompany the bodies home to Brisbane for a private funeral.

 

For full text, Link below

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014 ... nts-talking-about-ukraine

 

photo courtesy of article source

 

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