Community Heartache

I want to write about one thing but all I can think about is that the police found the little three-year old boy who had been missing since his mother was found dead in the backyard of a house several days ago. The man suspected of murdering her was himself found dead days later, a suicide completed as police were closing in on him. Once the killer was discovered with no sign of the little boy, the whole town pretty much knew how things would turn out.

Despite that, community leaders organized searches of several parks and neighborhoods, and we all had a dreamlike hope that the boy would be found playing, maybe dirty, wet, and hungry, but alive, waiting for the grown-ups to find him, crying for his mother. We thought maybe the murderer had left the boy in an alley or in a county park next to the swings. Told him he was going to McDonald’s and would be right back. But that’s not what happened.

The boy was found this afternoon. He is dead. There hasn’t been anything else shared about him. How he died, where he was found, how long he had been there. I’m not sure any of us wants to know more.

It is a tragedy beyond words for a little boy to lose his life in this way.

Every death of a child is very sad, heartbreaking in a unique, piercing way. Cancer, car accidents, myriad diseases and circumstances that come unexpectedly and undeservedly, randomly, land from nowhere to end little lives and rob families. These deaths are not the result of anyone’s intention so we rail at fate or God, depending on our beliefs and how angry we are.

This little boy was killed on purpose. We know who to blame but that person is already dead. Neither fate nor God is on the hook for this.

Everyone in town wanted to find this sweet boy somewhere just by accident and pick him up, have him wrap his legs around our waists and bury his head in our shoulders. We wanted to be the ones to tell him that everything would be okay, that he would be safe now because he was with us, even though we didn’t know him, we decided just driving by on the freeway and catching the giant photo of him out of the corner of our eyes that we loved him because he was a little boy. It was already too late when we thought this. We knew that but thought it anyway.

There is no good way to end this piece but to stop trying to put words on a page. There really are no more words.

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This afternoon’s news report on the missing boy.