Every time I see a person is missing, I grieve for them and I wonder who they are, what their story is. Every time I go into Walmart, I stare at their section on the wall near the bathrooms of missing children/teens and I grieve for them as if I had known them personally.
I do this every time and I don’t know why I started doing it initially but I’ve always felt it was necessary. Maybe I thought that by knowing their faces that one day I’d be able to help them in some way. I used to spend hours upon hours going through missing person databases to try and see if I could uncover a sliver of hope, something that could help these people and their families.
I had forgotten about my passion for doing this for a while and I just realized it again today, after watching a movie titled “Punjab 1984”, which is based on true events. I could not stop crying the whole movie and they showed those missing and those innocent who had died. It hit me at that moment that these families waited so long for an answer, for a body, for their child, anything and some didn’t receive any of those things. We have many instances of these things happening all over the world and it seems my heart is constantly grieving for those who are suffering in silence, those who are dead or who have not been found.
I can recount so many instances this year, in the US, alone where innocent people have died; those whose stories were ended because of the bad choices of somebody else. and where does that leave us? To constantly grieve for those we do not know? Every time I see a face, I am wondering who are you, what is your story? Are you wondering the same?
To all of those missing or have lost their lives, your story does not end with death.