By ALISSA WARREN

I cannot imagine a life without my children in it.

Three little people make up my world.

Three teeny, tiny humans. Their little hands, their little giggles, their little shoulders, their creamy skin, the smell of their breath in the morning and their warm little cuddles.

Three little people who I didn’t even know five years ago mean everything to me.

My. Three. Little. People.

But today, there are two parents who can imagine a world without their three children. Two parents who have been brutally forced into that bewildering, eviscerating world. Two parents who are in mourning.

Two parents who are living in a house that was once full of the laughing, bickering and chatting of their three young children. They sit in sadness in a house full of toys, school bags and kitchen drawers full of kid-friendly Tupperware and drink bottles. All these things: orphaned.

Anthony Maslin and Marite Norris are living a life most of us can’t imagine. A life without their children. Last week, they were living as blissfully as I am. And probably, you. They were living, what I imagine to be, a pretty normal Australian life.

Until their children, Mo, 12, Evie, 10, and Otis, 8, boarded flight MH17 to come home with their grandfather.

That good bye was their last.

And it was only until I read Anthony and Marite’s statement that my heart plummeted. Because it was more than a statement. It was a letter. A real and honest letter.

Like you, I’d seen their faces. Mo’s. Evie’s. Otis’s. For days. Most of the week, actually. I’d stared at those little children, smiling up at me from news sites and newspapers. I certainly felt sad when I looked at their photo. But I felt it because I should and because I was, well, genuinely sad. These young children had lost a life for no good reason. They’d been robbed of their dreams.

But their dreams weren’t the only dreams that’d been robbed.

Their parents had dreams for them, too. And now they’ve been robbed. Three times. In an instant.

The statement continued:

Only days ago, Anthony and Marite were probably living the same kind of life so many of us complain about. I certainly do. Unmade beds, day-old milk, bath time, brushing my daughters unruly hair, picking the kids up from school, Saturday morning sport.

And that’s where the true horror of MH17 bares its grubby, terrifying core. This atrocity could’ve happened to my family. It could’ve happened to yours. You might disagree. But allow yourself to think a little broader. Yes. It could’ve. Perhaps. Maybe.

And with that, the mundane suddenly seems special.

Nothing can bring those precious children back to their parents. Nor any of the victims of #MH17. The people.

As Anthony and Marie concluded in their open letter to all of us:

We must honour their wishes. We must leave them to grieve and to make sense of their lives in their empty house of love and loss and memories of their beloved three children.

Wishing for peace for Anthony and Marie and all the families who lost parts of their hearts on that plane.

UPDATE:W

e’re reading all your comments and taking the feedback on board. 

Many of you feel it’s wrong of us to publish anything about the family after their statement last night and we can understand that point of view. 

Alissa’s post was written last night as one mother’s thoughts and heartbreak and was meant as a show of empathy and support. 

I read the family’s statement about “grief is not a story” to be about media intrusion on them and requests for interviews and photographs. Not a post like this that’s about processing a terrible terrible tragedy and expressing love and sympathy for the parents and other families left devastated after the crash.

We did not feel that reaction was the same as intrusion. And please know that this post was only ever intended to be published for positive reasons.

But we will continue to read your thoughts. Our ears are open to your pushback.

-Mamamia Team