YOU can't be a reporter here in Northern Ireland without speaking to victims at some stage.
The Troubles made up a large part of our history, the darkest part, so as a journalist you would find yourself either speaking to those who are fresh in their grief, paying tribute to their loved one on an anniversary, when a murder case had been through a court of law, or if they were appealing for witnesses or justice or truth.
The Northern Ireland Secretary of State Brandon Lewis last week proposed a general amnesty for crimes committed during the Troubles prior to the 1998 ceasefire.
He suggests a 'truth and reconciliation commission' based on the model used in South Africa and elsewhere.
The suggestion quite rightly sent shock waves through Northern Ireland, and shook families of those lost to our Troubles to the core.
For many the quest for truth, justice and closure is what picked them up from their knees and allowed them the strength to carry their grief.
Knowing that someone someday might face justice for what they did to their precious loved one, or even that they might find out exactly what happened, drove them on.
Being their brutally and suddenly silenced loved one's voice gave them the fight they needed to go on, to not be crushed by grief, injustice and the cruelty of what happened.
Someone asked me for a phone number last week and as I scrolled down through the names in my phone's contact list I was struck by how many victims and survivors were there.
I was stunned by how many victim's stories that were told. As I scrolled down through them their faces and their stories came back to me.
There was the brother of a 20-year-old female UDR officer who was blown up by the IRA in Co Tyrone, just feet from where he himself stood. He has lived with PTSD and night terrors for 40 years.
There too was the brother of a 12-year-old girl, shot and killed by a plastic bullet fired by the British Army while walking in Twinbrook. The memory of his sister's brutal death still as fresh and raw in his mind as if it were yesterday.
There was Kathleen Gillespie, whose husband Patsy was strapped to his work van while she and their children were held at gunpoint by the IRA, and blown remotely to pieces along with five British soldiers at a border checkpoint on the outskirts of Derry.
Or Seamus McDonald, whose parents Rosaleen and Mervyn were killed in their Newtownabbey home by the UFF. The gunmen snatched Seamus's four month old sister from his mother's arms before opening fire on her and her husband at close range with automatic weapons.
Or Denise Mullen who sat in her bloodsoaked nightdress with her dying father on their doorstep and listened to the UVF gunmen fire at her mother as she fled across a field to safety.
Or Kate Nash, for whom time stood as still as her beloved brother William's heart as he lay dead on the path in the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
Or the husband of 29-year-old mother-of-one Joanne Mathers, gunned down by the IRA as she collected census forms in Derry in 1981, who to this day wonders if her killer is walking past him in the street.
The Ballymurphy families or the family of nine-year-old Patrick Rooney, shot dead by a British soldier's bullet as he took shelter in a bedroom of his Divis home; nine years old...
Or the countless, countless other people who lost loved ones on all sides in our brutal and bloody past.
The recurring thread I found when talking to those who suffered the most was their determined quest for justice. All of them said that if they died before justice was served or truth was found their children would carry that quest forward and their children's children.
Boris Johnson wants people to 'draw a line under the Troubles' and move on. I'm sure many would hope that the hunger for truth will die with those who seek it. That's a naive assumption.
We are just handing the fight, the heartache and the all-consuming quest, over to the next generation.
