Yes, We do Get Weary and Frightened
10/27/2004 01:21 p.m.
This morning’s paper brought me to tears, and for some reason, I haven’t been able to cry for a long time.
The wife, and mom of five girls, who went missing from her home near Ottawa five days ago, after leaving last Thursday morning to pick up milk at the store, and for whom her daughters and husband had been searching ever since, posting their homemade bulletins with her photo on them in the Manotick areas and south Ottawa, drove into their driveway yesterday and returned to their lives. Her life.

Ending her mysterious "going missing" sojourn, which was untypical for her, the family had all said when interviewed during the tense traumatic wait. Not knowing if she'd been abducted or murdered, or what could have happened to her. The youngest daughter is only ten. The others are young women. Her husband was feeling a little unwell the morning she left, but there was nothing unusual or evidently dramatic about the day, as far as any of them knew, until she failed to return.

So little of the story was given publicly last night after the reunion. Which was good, I think, as she was reportedly embarrassed by all the commotion and strain and heartbreak, out and out fear, her leaving had caused.

The reasons for the disappearance are not far off what I’d been imagining when I first learned of it.

She's my age, exactly (51) and ironically, obviously loves the same kind of topography, solace and happy memories from some of the same scenic areas as myself, and she’d driven her van to her favourite places when she and the family had happy memories, including my own cherished spot, Bon Echo Provincial Park. She slept in the van, in doughnut store parking lots at night. Ate granola bars from her dashboard (that she'd kept there for the girls when hungry in the car).

It doesn’t matter that she is pretty, but she is. In the photo today her husband has his arms around her, the girls are beaming, and the caption repeats her ten year-old’s headline verdict “MOM, YOU'RE GROUNDED".”

When trying to gain permission to post the flyer in a convenience store in Manotick, one of the young ladies could not express herself in words without crying, to explain what they were trying to do.

I’d guessed accurately, (it turns out) and commented to my daughter, that the prompt for the woman might have been an extreme reaction to stress, and this fall has indeed been very stressful for many (though all seasons are, fall seems to hit hard and we'd just had a similar case last week, of a woman going missing, then she returned. It is often a depressing and exhausting for some). As I discussed the story with Valerie (our daughter, 23 yrs old) yesterday and asked how she would react to me gone mysteriously missing suddenly, for five days, her quick supportive answer was wonderful. I don't know why I even felt the need to ask. It touched me so, her answer and earnestness. Why do we need to hear these things vocalized? Are we insecure that we're loved? But we do need to hear it, spelled out sometimes!!! What motivated the woman's drastic action I don’t believe can be summed up as quickly and easily as in the quotes in the paper, nor how this changes and affects the family unit and even herself and the community. All of us, really. Her reasons reflect the symptoms of so many in the area right now - financial stress, job loss for her husband in the technology trade (I’ve several friends whose lives and relationships have lately been dramatically wounded by this), dread of losing their house, and a fear (that she hadn't shared with anyone yet)of a new possible serious medical problem in herself, added to the mix.

Sometimes sudden or gradual stresses just overtake us and send us into a need for release or escape however strangely it takes form. She described herself as going into a "zombie" state, and drove as far as Niagara Falls for part of the sojourn.

I sat at my patio table this morning with my coffee, and the worker next door dragging a ladder over to climb up to the roof and make more noise, and about half-way through the story, the tears I’ve been needing to cry for a while just came. For this family, this woman, for all of us who are just trying to deal with life and how frightening just coping can be sometimes, and for the relief that the story wasn’t a tragedy, afterall, was it? Or was it? That she'd felt so isolated in her insecurities is tragic but real, to me.

Not everyone can afford to go to therapy, even if they can find a therapist they trust and find useful, nor do some lean to that. Or to other avenues, like church, etc., that may help ease the isolation.
I don't know.

Her daughters are telling each other never to take mom for granted if they ever did, or to let her know that they don’t more overtly. I wondered what her husband said.

She said herself, on the approach back home she did not know what reaction to expect. Would she be greeted, she wondered? That was a heavy line to read. And so ironic, considering the lengths of the search and the trauma at home. How little we sometimes "hear" or "see" the real love we need to know about, no matter what the reason for this failure, is a tragedy too.

And that she is not alone in the stressing, and it of course is not just women who suffering this kind of agony, when the various factors that seem to be thrown at us all build us to this feeling of overwhelming doom. But there is something about it being a woman, “the heart of the family” she was later described as. Maybe what hurts and frightens us so much is that we women think of ourselves and try to be the rock for the family, the balance and the shoulder, of all the worry, the grief, the responsibility, the staying strong in the gales. And when the mom in a panic takes off without word inexplicably and without warning, for a lengthy period, it is a huge shock and a terrifying shaking of that stability role. Let alone, the not knowing if she left voluntarily, or was abducted.

But the story to me shows, that we have to remember parents, and indeed, our spouses or live-in partners, are just people too, separate people, complex, and human with their fears and frailties. (Men too of course, fathers go through this and have huge stresses and try to hold onto the role of strong providers, towers, etc. So many are struggling right now with the financial pressures, health, etc.)

The greatest question I am left with was, what turned her around on the road far away, in Cobden, Ontario or further, (she was last sighted there by searchers) and made her go home? What was the trigger that the moment of running away or just breaking away for a time, to regain mental strength and believe that they could make it, was over?

Another question is, how did she summon the courage to do it, to drive into the laneway to home, quietly and prepare to deal with the questions and the attention, the confusion, and hopefully not, but perhaps in days to come from the public eye and others, the judgements?

The family assures that they are so happy to have her home, safe and well, that there isn’t any of that going on, and also it is sounding like they are tighter than ever.

I love the down-to-earth no-nonsense attitude of the youngest one, who to paraphrase responded to mom’s feeling of embarrassment for all the fuss caused as is then you shouldn’t have gone. But it wasn’t said in anger, just a natural consequence kind of statement like she’d been watching Dr. Phil a lot or something.

I think we’d be naive to think that this episode is just all wrapped up, and that is the pain too, with these issues. The woman has real causes for fear and concern, we all do, some more than others, and the road can look very bleak in our own backyards, and the temptation to follow a path off into the distance, to seek escape or answers or just “lose it” for an indefinite period of time, is there!

Strong, tight neighbourhoods and community relationships can help. Outreach programs at the church, the strong rural and urban women’s committees, etc. and spiritual support, can be very vital in these kinds of cases. I’ve seen this recently in my sister’s community where similar problems have occurred. And in my own.

Excuse the roughness of this draft but as I said I’m reacting to the newsstory and hopefully will bring the story into a poem one day. But right now I’m just reacting as a fellow woman, mother, human, and I’m so glad if everything brightens or from reading this someone can offer them suppport.

I could not, however, miss the irony and the reality that on the same day, on the same front page of the paper, was a story of a woman of thirty-four, who met a worse ending. Living in ill fortune, with little literacy and with mental illness history, who people found weird as she liked to stop people everywhere just to talk, and keep talking, was just found murdered, in her own apartment.


*information and paraphrasing based on the Ottawa Citizen newspaper this morning and credit for the story to that publication. I hope there are no inaccuracies, and apologize in advance to the family if there are, or if there were in the newspaper, as can happen.
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