When a kid in your neighborhood mysteriously disappears and goes missing for weeks, most people know what probably happened but just don’t want to say it. They know the news the police will reveal won’t be positive. Then, the news is finally announced on some police station’s Facebook post that you’ve been following for the past couple of days for this exact moment.
It’s usually something you’d feel sad about for a day, maybe say a prayer, or attend the funeral service. Afterward, you’d come home and hang your black shirt and dress pants back to be worn again for some induction ceremony at your high school. That outfit wouldn’t hold any memories of the service; it was just what you would wear for special events. Then you’d plop on the couch, watch some evening TV as you normally would any weeknight, and go to bed. The rest of your week would go on as usual.
I never imagined what it would be like to be in the shoes of a family who lost someone.
When you’re the family of the missing person, and your little brother is the one missing, things go differently.
You’re not just a bystander. You keep holding onto that tiny strand of hope even when the circumstances get more dire. You don’t want to accept that someone so tiny, innocent, and full of wonder and optimism could ever be gone. You feel he’s alive because you couldn’t fathom a world without him. While other people view the heartbreaking news as inevitable, I did not even consider it.
It was a Wednesday night, and my mom just got the call. I honestly don’t know why, but I thought this call would bring different news.
I went with my mom to identify the body. Even though the sibling of the dead kid normally isn’t expected to identify the body, my mom was a wreck, so it was my job to take care of her. Even then, I knew it would be just us from that point.
I felt numb as I put my coat on and helped my ghostly pale mother put on hers. I could see her hands trembling, so I bundled her up like she used to do when I was a kid getting on the school bus. How incredibly cruel life can sometimes be.
I don’t even remember driving to the police station.
I know my hands gripped the steering wheel while my mom was sniffling and gazing out the window. I must have turned at the right intersections because we somehow ended up in the police station parking lot. Before we walked in, we sat in the parked car together. Maybe we thought if we didn’t walk in, reality wouldn’t catch up with us. We wouldn’t have to learn whether or not that was Tommy in there. If it was, it meant there was nothing else we could do. There would be no more flyers to hang, Facebook posts to make, or police reports to fill out. There would be no more hope, optimism, or prayers that could bring him back. There would be nothing left for us to do to keep ourselves busy from what we feared would happen.
So we sat in the car a bit longer than we normally would have.
After the stalling began to feel obvious, I got out of the car, breathing heavily. I opened my mom’s door and held her hand as we walked inside. I inhaled deeply.
Several sympathetic-looking police officers greeted us, and I limply shook their hands and followed one to a back room.
As I entered through the door, I heard a noise I barely identified. It was my mom screaming as she collapsed to the floor and melted into it, weeping. An officer came to her rescue, trying to lift her in vain. I felt outside my body as I began to register what was in front of me — more specifically, who was in front of me.
“Is this Tommy?” an officer asked me quietly, almost as if he already knew the answer. He also clearly knew my mother could not be the one to provide a verbal response. I looked at the person lying on the table. The small, frail body. The dinosaur t-shirt and cargo jeans. The black Converse I bought him for Christmas. The small features on a face that was once so animated and life-like now looked cold and drained.
“It was,” I sighed before my body collapsed and gave into a long-awaited sob.
Featured image via Kat Wilcox on Pexels
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