Life without his son Jack has been overwhelming for Sydney's John O'Brien who says: "Sometimes only one person is missing but the whole world feels empty".
Jack O'Brien was one of 38 Australians killed when Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot out of the sky over Ukraine near the Russian border on July 17, 2014.
Jack's parents and the relatives of five other NSW residents on the plane - Carol and Michael Clancy, Victor Oreshkin, Gabriele Lauschet and Sister Philomena Tiernan - have shared their grief and loss at an inquest into their deaths.
"Nothing can be OK in the way it was before," Mr O'Brien said.
"The people most affected are Jack and the other 297 people on MH17 who had their lives taken from them," he said.
State Coroner Michael Barnes found the six deaths were "part of a gross, mass murder", the result of a high altitude aircraft disintegration caused by the detonation of a warhead.
"The fatal injuries were inflicted as a result of a person or persons who has or have not yet been identified, deliberately firing a missile equipped with an exploding warhead at the jetliner in which the deceased persons were passengers, causing it to disintegrate at high altitude," he said.
The Dutch Safety Board found that a Russian-made warhead launched from a Buk surface-to-air missile detonated within a metre above the cockpit, causing the plane to break up and debris to spread over a 50 square kilometre radius.
Fourteen Australian Federal Police officers are still overseas assisting with the ongoing criminal investigation to identify and prosecute those to blame.
Meryn O'Brien is distressed by images in her mind of her son's final moments, his body falling through the sky and lying broken and burnt in a war zone.
Another mother, Vera Oreshkin, struggled to put into words the loss of her son Victor, 29.
"Words cannot do justice for Victor. He deserves justice, as do the other passengers. He deserves accountability," she said.
"To me, his mother, and Serge, his father, Victor is part of us, a part of our hearts that has been torn out and can never be fixed or filled," she said.
Between moments of emotion, Tim Lauschet found reasons to laugh as he shared memories of the time he and his 48-year-old mother Gabriele Lauschet stole council mulch together in the dark, and how he misses her complaints about the dishwasher not being emptied.
"She was my whole and complete family," he said.
"When that plane went down I lost my family."
Bryan Clancy read a poem from his brother Michael Clancy, 57, and sister-in-law Carol, 63.
Their only consolation, he added, was that they died together.
Sister Joan Pender gave thanks for the life of her friend, Sister Philomena Tiernan, 77, who was returning from a conference.
"Death is not a departing from life but a returning to its heart," she said.
The criminal investigation into the MH17 crash is expected to continue until at least October.
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