It is the unknowning

It’s been raining a lot in Portland.  Yesterday I found myself driving five blocks down the road to pick up my son because the skies unleashed a sudden and torrential downpour.  And while I do love the rain, my heart is heavy and my thoughts are with the lost boy, Kyron.  The possibility that he has been outside in this weather for a week now is heartbreaking…that he may be inside with someone keeping him, is unsettling.

When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, I did a report on Amelia Earhart. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared while trying to circumnavigate the globe.  As a child, I was deeply effected by this feeling of unresolve.  Likely, Amelia’s plane had crashed into the ocean.  But rumors throughout the years speculated that she and her cohort had made it to land.  There are stories of their capture as well as stories of their perishing on a deserted island.  Likely, no one will ever know what really happened.  And it is that ‘not knowing’ that I find hard to reconcile.

Over the years, I have wondered about the fates of many missing persons.  Often, in my work with the homeless, I found myself looking into the faces of those I met, wondering what lives and people, family, they had left behind.  Were they missing to someone? Were they being looked for?  I cannot begin to imagine the pain of not knowing where your beloved child is.

The rain is coming down harder now. It seems impossible that the skies could still hold this much water.  It seems impossible that a child could just disappear.  My thoughts are with Kyron and his family, and with all those who are missing, and all those who are living in the unknowing.