A missing person.

Think about it. What if it were your child?

We see the missing person’s posters. We glance briefly at the face, and then we move on. We probably don’t even process or memorize what they look like. We might walk by that child in a store and not pay a moment’s notice. And an adult? Even less attention. They disappear by the hundreds, maybe thousands, every year. Lost to the streets, child traffickers, suicide, runaways, and the occasional murderer. Some are held for years, or indoctrinated into a new family, only to escape years later. Some show up as bones found on a walk, and some other person gets the results to figure out this cold case. But let us look a little closer. Because when it hits close to home, boy! It sure hits hard.

I wrote a book a couple of years back…the subject was child loss. I wrote it because as a nurse, a mom, and as a woman who had lost a child to adoption, miscarriage, and estrangement…I thought I knew loss. I wrote it to let others talk about their grief and the silencing of society. Just move on, they say. Get over it. You can have another, or it was God’s will. Patronizing statements. I hadn’t buried a child, but I had surely lived many days with grief in my heart. I had given up a daughter for adoption, and believe me, that is a lifetime loss. You look at every child you see and wonder…is it her? It hits at the weirdest moments and the predictable ones. Holidays are obvious. But what about her fifth year on the first day of kindergarten? You don’t forget.

In my book, I explored all loss, including estrangement, addiction, and the scary topics like murder. This one I had to research, and to say I was naive was an understatement. We are not a safe society. We’ve left our door unlocked, our windows open. Our kids play in the yard. But we shouldn’t trust that we are safe. Because predators rely on our naivety.

How many times has your teenager embarked on their own path that you worried? It never stops. They go off for a weekend, and you pray they don’t get in an accident. You worry about the drugs and alcohol, and/or them finding the wrong partner. But what can you do? Lock them in a room? Keep them in a time warp? Of course you can’t. And then…they go missing. Not for a few hours, and you track them down. Not for a few days when they ran off after an argument. Not for a few months in a test of rebellion and obstinance. But really, really missing! Call it hell.

This is not my story, but my girlfriend’s. My childhood friend for the last fifty-five years. Her son Liam Toman went skiing in Mount Tremblant in Quebec and disappeared after leaving a bar in the village. He was alone at that bar, and his friends notified his family that he hadn’t returned the next day. My friend is divorced, so both parents headed to Quebec. There were searches of every kind. Land, drones, dogs, air, and swamps searched. Nothing. Not a trace. A last text at 3 am to meet someone outside the bar. And then gone. He didn’t wander drunkenly off into a snowbank. They would have found him in the spring. They didn’t. They found a wallet, though, his. In a parking lot in the village. And that is the only clue. The town was supportive for a while. Signs up. Answering questions. But that was in February, and now it is August. The resort area seems tired of this now. Maybe bad publicity? But would you stop if it were your child? He is 22, so technically an adult. But still someone’s child. My friend’s son, to be exact. Was he lured away and beaten? Did he run into trouble at the bar? Did he grab a ride that ended poorly? We have thought of every possibility, and none of them are good.

The months go by. She is now trying to get better lighting and video surveillance in the village. Trying to make things better for the next visitors. And Liam is still gone.

What if it were your child????