Our people say, the one whose child is dead is more at peace than the one whose child is missing.
In the last few weeks, we have been inundated with different stories about missing children. Thankfully, I hear a few have been found. As a parent, I know the anguish of having one’s child go missing.
You are tortured with strange images of where your child might be; if it’s a son, like mine, you wonder whether he is being fed and what he is being fed with. You wonder how badly he must be crying for you if he is a mere child like my five-year-old son that was taken.
You torture yourself with images of your child being whipped to submission, may be the people who took your child have drugged him/her? Is your child sleeping well after many days? What dungeon, what cold slimy, wet ground is your child being held in? In chains? Is his/her head shaven to disguise his looks from people looking for him?
You may even lose your mind because you will often hear your child calling you. Yes, audible cries for help. You can’t decide whether it’s in your head or you actually heard it…people of course will tell you it’s only your imagination playing tricks on you but as a parent, one who loves the missing one, you will know it’s no trick of nature.
Could also be you unknowingly walked past were your child is being held captive. Your torment never ends as the days grow into weeks and weeks months…then years…like with my son.
In the years…as you count, you wonder, perhaps, the child has been killed and his/her parts used for whatever sick motive the kidnappers took them for. These and more will invade your waking moments…if you ever find sleep!
But be assured, you will neither be able to sleep or eat…for days. You are constantly wondering why you are still breathing because your breath will come in gasps, as if someone is holding you in a chokehold.
My son was five when he was taken. He was a special needs boy, he had Down Syndrome. You will ask me why we got careless…he was taken in a church. We went for a crusade; we went to seek miracles. We took our boy in the hope of cure, something to make our son better, for him to fulfill his purpose in life…or so we thought.
My wife, bless her soul. She was the one who had charge of him while I went to buy us some food. It was the kind of crusade…you know how crusades get? Crowded out, we spread out on the open field at the stadium; yes, national stadium.
One minute my wife said she told another lady, who was also there with two children to watch our boy while she went to ease herself. By the time she came back, the woman was gone with our boy and her own two children!
My wife thought maybe she missed the spot, maybe they were seated further than she gauged. I came later, with snacks and drinks to find my wife in a panix.
“Our son is missing,” she told me tears flowing.
How?
That kind of fright doesn’t register immediately because you tell yourself, we must have missed the spot we were seated.
Then you go over again, wasting precious time, time we could have expended chasing after the bastards who took our child.
But this is a crusade, I kept repeating to myself, who steals a child at a crusade? Are they not afraid of the wrath of God?
As these were days before GSM, we were just running scared in the midst of a loud and raucous religious crowd. We searched, we called out…how could we even find ourselves in a stadium full of people? Where movement was difficult without starting a stampede?
By the time we got to the podium to announce our missing son, it was too late, yes the announcement was aired but a good number of people had exited.
We reported at the police station. They were incapable of any help. My wife and I lived like a mad woman and man for months; you see, Richard was our first born, he was the only son.
At our local church, they asked us to see it as an ‘act of God’ but they missed it, God does not permit this sort of evil. What do you want to do with a boy with down syndrome? How does he even tell strangers he wants to go home should he be found wandering? The anguish, the pain was too much for my wife. She just died one day. We were seated at the dining when she just heaved and died, just like that.
It’s almost 20 years now and I have buried Richard in my heart but I still look at people with down syndrome and wonder…
(series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)