As most of you know, my sister is missing. Of course, this is a constant theme in my blogging, you know, work it out on paper etc.
The process of looking for her has not been easy, which I guess is to be expected. It took me quite a while to make it public knowledge. Early on we had a very bad experience with the Florida State Police that left us without a resource and that experience caused us to work independently. This was the case from Dec. 2005 until Aug 2007, when through a bizarre set of circumstances Emillie's case became the business of a detective in Del Ray Beach, FL. He passed the case on to a fantastic detective in Highland Beach, which is the last place that she was seen.
Leads have been very few, the community is a very affluent neighborhood that doesn't really speak to their neighbors. There was a rumor that she was in Ft. Lauderdale, no luck... Then Boca Raton, no luck. A lie, about her going to Colorado, no luck. A wide-spread identity search that listed no activity on her passport, her driver's license, SS#, Credit Cards etc.
We have checked the hospitals, morgues, rehab centers, nothing.
Having exhausted these outlets, I posted a profile on Myspace that holds info about her. I got some truly insensitive e-mails from her "friends", when I began to ask questions of them, they refused to talk to me.
I sent e-mails to Oprah, Court TV, etc, nothing...
I started a group on Facebook, trying the viral marketing approach. I mean if people can take the time to send me a bunch of mother fucking "flare" and post the same video to my funwall then surely they can spread the word. That assumption has proved shall we say, less than fruitful.
In this last act, I kind of put myself out there. I mean, the people that are my Facebook friends are people that I see or am in contact with often. Most of them had no idea. I kept this to myself because I don't really have a place to put it. The fewer people that knew, the easier it was for me to control the emotion that I have about the situation. I could be active, look, and not have to be vulnerable. Let's just say that Facebook has opened this subject up, and that has been hard for me.
To all of you, thank you for your prayers and concern. I am so thankful. I am sorry that I have not been forthcoming in all of this, it is something that I can;t even talk about without having some sort of terribly inappropriate emotion blurt out.
At any rate, here we are. My mom found a the draft of a letter from Emillie to me and brought it out last week. I didn't read it right away, just couldn't. It took me three days to sit down and look at it. First, let me say, waiting three days was not my best idea. In that short time, the letter became some sort of key to Emillie, a clue to her. When I read it, I was left less enlightened and more sad. It was written about 4 years ago, when she was home with mom. Things had not been going well for her. She was fighting drug addiction, a bad relationship, and a great many health problems.
Our relationship had suffered from my sickness of her attitude and our proximity to each other. We had fought a lot as teens, I was a big mess and she was a big mess, and whenever we converged upon each other bad things happened.
This letter was an apology, a hopeless, self-deprecating apology. The words of a person with Bipolar disorder coming to terms with her actions that, to be honest, I don't think she really had control over in the first place. She wanted love and approval like all of us. Unfortunately, she had actions that she felt that she needed to live down.
Father Brendan had tried to get me to realize this need in Emillie. I think that I tried to reach out, I know that Mom and Aaron did, but it wasn't enough. This letter was so self-hating. I just wish that I would have known at the time. It reminded me of Jason Ogan funeral a few weeks ago (I am referring to Emillie's letter) Jason wrote a similar letter to his father. He said near the end that he wanted to get better, he was trying to get better. Emillie says the same thing.
In the end, I am left wishing that I had a connection to her. We were apart for so long. It is like the feeling that I have for my Dad, a sort on unfamiliar love. A conditional connection of genetics, vague memories and a need to be loved and accepted by that person that is no longer with you.
So, of course, we all have tragedy. It is a motivator for good I guess. A way of connecting our experience to those of other people. A means for social conscience spurring us on to quell the tide of evil, I know. "That which does not kill us" and all... But, does it have to keep on killing others? Why is it that some of us are left and others are taken? How does it all fit? (these are rhetorical questions, I am not trying to be on the pity pot.)
