THE FACT OF THE MATTER
BY PAUL HOPKINS
In the latest figures available, for 2024, Gardaí recorded 4,095 missing persons. The vast majority of these were located quickly. However, as of now, 47 individuals remain unaccounted for, as do hundreds more over the years. Men, women and children seemingly having vanished, their loved ones left behind not knowing and lost in an ether of sorts.
Like Noeleen Bieninda, the mother of Elizabeth Clarke, who 15 months since Gardaí upgraded the case of her daughter from missing person to murder, has again called on investigators to “please keep searching” for her only daughter’s remains.
Almost 13 years ago, the 24-year-old mother of two disappeared without a trace. Her mother says life has been very difficult for the family, but their pain and suffering have “intensified” since the case was upgraded. “I do feel she was murdered. I do think she’s gone. She wouldn’t have left her two kids like that, no way. I just want answers. More than anything I want for her to be found, so that we might get some closure after all these years. So that we can give her a resting place and have somewhere to visit her.”
How much do we think about the families of the missing, as we scan news headlines and stream true crime documentaries and project our own judgments onto a viral case? For example, questioning whether the McCann parents had something to do with their daughter Madeleine’s disappearance in 2007?
Or was a serial killer responsible for the disappearance of the young women who vanished in the hinterland around Moone, Co. Kildare, back in the 1990s? Since 2021 and up to recently, digs at numerous sites “of interest” in the case of Dullard and Deirdre Jacob in Kildare have yielded “nothing of evidential value”, according to Gardaí.
For those left behind in a limbo of just not knowing, there is what is termed ambiguous grief. When applied to families of missing persons, this refers to a sense of unresolved loss, where there isn’t the necessary information to suggest that such a loss is, in any meaning of the word, finite.
Ambiguous grief could be the result of a partner abandoning their family without explanation. It could happen with forced separations, like when refugees are separated from loved ones. It may be felt when someone in a family is deployed with the military and their whereabouts are unknown for long periods of time. The Disappeared during 30 years of the Troubles is a case in point.
The key difference between grief and ambiguous grief is the element of the unknown – the persistent thought that you have no idea what has happened or what the future holds.
When someone disappears, their family is left in a state of emotional limbo. Without definitive answers, loved ones are forced to carry two opposing truths: hope that the person is alive and safe, and fear that they may never return. This mental tug-of-war can be emotionally exhausting and deeply isolating. Some of the specific challenges loved ones face include a lack of closure when, without confirmation of life or death, families may feel trapped in an endless loop of searching and waiting. There is social disenfranchisement because society often doesn’t recognise ambiguous grief in the same way as conventional loss. Families may receive less emotional support or even be told to “move on”, or encouraged not to worry because they don’t know anything for certain.
Decisions like cleaning out a now-abandoned home or having someone declared dead can be legally dicey, as well as mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting. The trauma can be utterly ongoing. Every new lead, sighting or update reopens wounds and reboots the grieving, creating that cycle of hope and despair.
Hope becomes a double-edged sword, inspiring at times positive optimism and a desire to keep carrying on, but if hopefulness becomes dashed, perhaps even deeper, the despair then follows. The turmoil of contrasting emotions, endlessly oscillating between that hope and despair, may prevent ‘closure’ and finding mental peace.
I wonder which is worse — to know definitively that a loved one has been killed, or to not know what happened; just that someone has gone missing?
With a child gone missing inexplicably, there are years of wondering about his or her graduation, their falling in love, having children or just growing old. All those years of losing out. Waiting for a lit-up face to come in the door and dance lightly across the room, no longer casting shadows of doubt on the whats and ifs… and the not-knowing.
