One year.  One frickin' year, and we are no closer to seeing this case solved anytime soon.

In March of last year, we'd gone to the park:  me, my husband, and our three children --  Jasper, Feather, and Wylie.  We'd gone after church, and we went to kill some time on a beautiful early spring day. 

Little did we know of the nightmare that would soon surround us.

Roughly fifteen minutes before we were to head back home, we'd called the children, to let them know that we would be leaving.  Feather and Jasper came ... but no Wylie.  We figured that he was either hiding or was so busy in his play he didn't hear us call him.  We searched for a half hour, but nothing.

We went home with heavy hearts.  We were scared that soemthing might have happened to him:  a stranger could have kidnapped him, or else he could have fallen into the crick or hit his head on a rock, knocking himself unconscious.  All sorts of terrifying thoughts/images replayed themselves over and over in our mind; we had no idea what had happened to our son.

We called the police and filed a missing-child report.  We did all that they told us to do: get on the radio and contact the local television stations, to alert the public of the missing boy, and answered any and all questions as best as we could, given the difficulty of the situation we were facing.  It was one of the worst moments of our lives.

A year later, we still live in this nightmarish bubble.  We don't know if our son was purposely kidnapped or killed, or what.  We pray every day for Wylie's safe return, but each day that goes by, we find that hope fading.  We are trying to be positive, but things are quickly changing because he could very well be dead by now, perhaps buried in some unmarked grave, or else a predatorial creature could have gobbled him up, leaving nothing but bones in its wake.

Just about every week, members of the media want to talk to us, to share our story of tragic loss, with them; we are getting fed up with them fast because no matter what we tell them, it somehow ends up coming out all wrong; they don't have all of the clear facts, nor do they even show any interest in getting the story out in its correct form insteaad of putting out mere speculations.

Our son is on a national missing-child list; we sometimes see his little face plastered on posters at some of the local businesses/stores; each time we look at it it's another slap to the face, another reopening of old wounds, to remind us once again of what we have lost.

*To be continued.*