A Family's Loss, A Neighborhood's Grief

If there is anything I try to adhere to while writing for this blog, it’s a sense of light-heartedness and joy in the topics I choose.  But in a world that defies explanation, there are topics I find necessary to broach that tug at ones heart and hang there heavily, waiting for explanation that generally does not come. 

In late spring of 1998, my family moved to Fishers, Indiana.  The neighborhood is called Sawgrass, and we have been here ever since.  The family that first greeted us in our neighborhood has the name of Riekhof.  They lived across the street.  Mike and Mitzi had two young daughters and a son came later.  They moved to another neighborhood eventually and another son was born to make a family of six. 

We’d see the Riekhofs from time to time, and I even had the pleasure of working with their oldest son on math and reading one summer.  Those details aren’t really relevant. 

Just last week, one of their daughters went missing.  It was out of her character not to contact somebody at home, and a network of communication was put into place immediately.  Yesterday, I asked if I could be of use, and was instructed to search a stretch of road with two neighbors.  Our goal was to locate a cell phone or any personal artifact or clue to her disappearance.  With a number of members of our community, and some outside of it, there was a search and a hope that an 18 year old daughter and member of our community would be located and safely returned to her family in a reunion as joyful as that as a certain prodigal son.

But as I said, our world often leaves us wondering, and late in the afternoon, a beautiful girl was located, not of this world any longer.  There is a family, one that has touched our hearts, who is hurting in a way that I pray will never affect the ones that I love.  There is nothing I can say, write, or feel in my being that will ever offer peace to that family who lost a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, and a niece.

One aspect of this site is to recognize people who, in my heart, represent a sense of light.  These thoughts derive from feelings of neighborhood.  A truth, and what I feel to be a burning sense of spirit, is a group of people who have been there from the first lonely realization that a family member wasn’t home.  David and Susan Delafield have been with the family every day.  David has headed a tactical search station for the community each and every day she was missing.  Dave and Sandra Sutton have been available to the family before, during, and now in this phase of the situation.  I take strength in the actions of these individuals, whom I am proud to call my neighbors.  I only hope the Riekhof family can find some strength through those who care so very much.