A Year Ago We Lost a Child, and I Was Among Those That Found Her

I can’t turn away from the national tragedy of America’s murdered children

Image by Walter Rhein

The girl that had gone missing was between the ages of my two daughters. The school sent out an alert, and I was out the door within ten minutes of getting the news. I took my dog with me. He’s an eighty pound lab and he would provide me with a tremendous amount of comfort in the days that followed.

As I left my home, I was burdened by a sense of responsibility. There was something awful in the atmosphere. I felt I owed it to the community to go and join the search even though I had little hope of finding the missing girl.

I didn’t think I would find her, but I was wrong.

The impulse to help is constantly on the periphery of our thoughts. Deep down, we want to help each other. We want the opportunity to protect children. We all want that. We just get confused by nonsense and tend to push our awareness of that shared belief to the side. We become fixated on the unimportant.

We’re rendered impotent. That’s the word that describes how I felt that day: impotent. You don’t want to read about little girls going missing. That never ends well. We know that terrible things exist, but we can’t allow ourselves to become…