logic without a heartbeat

Today is one of those days that I’m just in turmoil inside.  
People who haven’t lost a child have NO Clue what our lives become. 

 I have two nephews who have been missing for 10 years. And twice this month when visiting friends, they asked how my sister is doing. And I am just totally floored by how insensitive and cold hearted their replies are. 

 To the one friend I said my sister is doing okay considering. My girlfriend said what do you mean? This girlfriend has always known about my missing nephews. I tried to express that although my sister is doing ok in general, she is still searching for her two lost boys and that is a hard place to be. 

 I’m trying to find the words of how I felt when my girlfriend replied. I distinctly remember my bodily reacting as if someone had powerfully thrust a dull dagger into my chest. My shoulders pulled around me as I recoiled from the impact of the blow. The air was knocked out of me. I was angry and indignant as her words burned into me. “She needs to understand that they aren’t little boys anymore….and she needs to realize that they might not want to ever see her... – blah blah blah blah … get over it..” 

 What a cold-hearted, judgmental, insensitive –itch. I thought to myself. What the heck would YOU know what it’s like? You talk to your son on the phone every day, right? Often it’s several times a day. How can you spout out words of advice of how my sister should go on and just put it all behind her. How would YOU feel if the shoe were on the other foot and you didn’t even know what your son looked like? If his biological father moved him from family member to family member to family member – between several states and back again – and YOU were blocked from him? Then if you were to call up a family member that you think had your son, and they hung up on you. Or when you call and you can hear children’s voices in the background but you’re told your son isn’t there. To not know – to honestly NOT KNOW where you son was or what was happening with him. Tell me how you think YOU would feel? WRONG!!! 
You’re absolutely wrong!!! YOU have NO CLUE how that would feel! How could you? How could you possibly know the feelings of helplessness, the feelings of anger, the feelings of being betrayed, the feelings of GRIEF sadness and loss? How could you? You KNOW where your son is. Even if you tried to imagine don’t forget to think about how deflated and dismissed it would feel with everyone telling you what you SHOULD do – as if you are stupid or as if you aren’t searching hard enough. Don’t forget to feel the pain when people look at you as if you’re undeserving of your own child. Don’t forget to imagine how LONELY it would be to try facing each and every day without someone else to talk to, someone who understands. Not judge, just understand. Imagine how isolated you’d feel that you don’t have someone to go to when you’re crying and have no idea what to do next. Without anyone to sit beside you and just cry with you or give you a hug when you feel like you’d just rather die. You can’t imagine it at all. You can’t imagine the overwhelming pain of surviving just one day without your son – let alone a month, a year, a decade. Don’t stand there and tell me what this poor woman needs to do. I won’t tell her to give up. I won’t tell her to stop loving her boys. I won’t tell her to stop searching. And I won’t tell her that she should not grieve, that she should get on with her life or get over it. You just don’t understand. As long as she breathes, a mother longs for her child. To get over it means we would have to cease breathing, lie down and die.