As I sit here and type away this story, I find myself sifting through all the moments I experienced throughout my life. Through all the momentary flashes in my life that has resulted in where I am today. That to me is the truth. The truth about who we are today is a reflection and culmination of every single moment we experienced in life since the day we were born. So why were we born into this life in the first place? What has led us to the current set of circumstances that we now find ourselves in? The answer to these questions became clearer to me when I started becoming aware of my past, and that of my family.

My parents arrived in Melbourne in the early 1980’s. Both of them were quite religious and thought the best way to start their lives was with God. They arranged to temporarily stay with a school that trained catholic priests in a place called the Divine Word Missionary. At this place they cooked and cleaned, and saved as much as they could. Whilst they were there, it came to the school’s attention that a church in the western suburbs of Melbourne had a house they no longer held any use for. It was a rundown house that needed a lot of work. After a few months of cooking and cleaning, they moved in on minimum rent.

When I say this house was rundown, it was much worse than that. The house wasn’t used for a while and maintenance was one of the reasons why the church had to let it go. It was a weatherboard house. On every wall you could find shifted cracks that were so big, grass would find its way inside. In fact, I used to see grass and mushrooms growing through the carpet. The toilet was the typical Aussie ‘Dunny Can’ where there was a cubicle in the backyard that also had grass and insects growing inside of it. The backyard itself was massive and untrimmed. There was a field of grass and plants that were at least two metres high.

For a kid, this was a scary place. But this was the best my parents could afford. They bought some paint and plaster cement, and went to work with some of their seminary friends that came to help them. Within a week, my parents turned a rundown shack into a liveable home. And so their journey began. Along the way, they found themselves living through some very difficult times. In 1983, my mother’s brother got caught up in a shooting due to the civil unrest going on in Sri Lanka. My uncle, Philip, saw a bunch of guys shooting on a truck. As far as the stories about this incident go, he got everyone inside a shop, and then went outside to check that everything had calmed down. A bullet got shot in his torso. When the situation had settled, people came out of hiding and arranged for him to be taken to the hospital. By the time he got there, he had lost so much blood that it was too late.

The incident that I’m talking about was an event that occurred in Sri Lanka, 1983, known as ‘Black July’. Both sides of the conflict had taken violence to a new level with all parties out for retribution. My mother had a really bad feeling the day my uncle passed away. A random phone call from Sri Lanka came in and my mother answered. The news was devastating. My uncle was the last person in her family that she saw before coming to Australia. He sent her off on a train to Colombo and told her, “Wait for me I’ll be coming to Australia.”

My mother so badly wanted to go for the funeral and see her brother’s body one last time. She couldn’t though. If she left Australia, immigration policies at the time would have meant that my mother would lose her chance to get a permanent residency status. She wanted to speak to all of her brothers and sisters back in Sri Lanka. To share in the shock and grief of events transpired. But she couldn’t do that either. My parents had just begun their lives in a new country. International phone calls back then was something of a luxury for people starting from a low socioeconomic background. It was a truly testing time for her.

Not long after the death of my uncle, came the passing of my mother’s father. He hadn’t coped well in dealing with the loss of his son and the circumstances surrounding his death. My mother faced more devastating news knowing that there was nothing she could do. I hadn’t been born yet at the time, but I know what my mother would have done. And that is pray. Whenever my mother faces challenges in her life, she turns to God, and prays.

My mother had the consolation of my father to get her through a difficult time in her life. And my father was there as the dutiful husband. However, he too had his own obstacles to overcome. Events that were to follow would test both my parent’s resolve as they sought to create a life in Australia.