Life, for us, stopped the moment our son vanished without trace. We haven’t “moved on” and I can’t think how we can unless we forget he existed. It might appear we have because we didn’t disappear. We are still here. Life continues its path. But now we live two lives. One foot in the present and one foot firmly in the past. We are not ready to give up on his life and cast him aside. A memory of inconsequence. He deserves to be found because we don’t think he was allowed to make a choice for himself. Was it an accident? However, no body was ever found. Or, did someone choose his fate for him? We may never know.
We hope time will tell. Until it does, we are still living in that moment when we knew he had vanished out of character. That awful dawning realization, that fateful knowledge, we are in this for the long haul.
I am sure it’s meant well when it’s suggested we have to ‘move on.’ It is incomprehensible to those who haven’t been in this situation to imagine how stuck we are in this ongoing grief. It has a name Ambiguous Loss. There are thousands like me living this loss, desperately hoping one day to get answers.
No matter how long it’s been - it is still an open wound. We have learned to live around the emptiness of it. But we cannot walk away and ‘move on.’
