Missing people - Leaving a legacy of emptiness

THE vast, almost bottomless and uncharted, internet can enrage and inform, entertain and educate, mislead and have a negative or positive influence, but even in this huge resource, the sites devoted to trying to find missing people are amongst the most poignant.

Those dedicated to trying to trace children are almost too harrowing for words.

This phenomenon is nearly always a great tragedy causing those abandoned to live a life of worry and guilt, a life wondering what they might have done wrong or what became of the loved one who disappeared without trace.

In many of these cases the cliché – “it was like a death in the family” – is only too true. In many cases it is a death in the family but that the death remains unconfirmed and a mystery does nothing other than deepen the hurt and worry.

In other cases, someone has decided to cut all ties with their family and community and build a new life. Though this is the least tragic of these situations, it is still a huge burden for the families left behind. When the missing person is a vulnerable child or a young person, the situation is even more tragic and invasive.

When Madeline McCann went missing just two years ago – May 3, 2007 – in Portugal, the event got more publicity than all the other missing children in the world. It has certainly got more publicity than the hundreds of thousands of children who vanished since she disappeared from a holiday apartment.

The deaths of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, walking happily along the road in Soham in matching football shirts before being sucked into the black hole of Ian Huntley’s house, fall into this category too.

It is difficult to make sense of this disparity and for the families of the others who have disappeared it probably makes their situation even more difficult.

Those difficulties have been highlighted in recent days for the family of Dublin schoolboy Philip Cairns, who has been missing for 23 years.

Earlier this week gardaí sealed off a wooded area of a south Dublin golf club as part of a renewed search for the boy. Acting on a new lead, gardaí sealed off part of Grange Golf Club in Rathfarnham for technical examination. The 13-year-old schoolboy was last seen on the Ballyroan Road in Rathfarnham on Thursday, October 23, 1986.

Despite extensive searches in the aftermath of his disappearance, no trace of him has been found.

The situation is equally bleak in the cases of Iyabo Bolarinwa, Kevin Goff, Michael Kinsella, Seamus Clarke, Shane Jenkins, Paul McCarthy, James Flynn, Bernie Gavan, Michael Reardon, Danny Walsh, Colin Turner or Martin Doyle, just a few of the scores of names on the Garda register of missing people.

Each of those names, and many tens of thousands more, represent families living with ghosts. They live in that terrible unknowing – the torment of always hoping, always looking and waiting, not being able to say goodbye – one of the most heartbreaking aspects of these cases.

Many of us will, at some stage in our lives, be in a position to help in the search for a missing person. When that time comes, we should do all we can to ensure the best possible outcome for all involved.