I know something about what you are referencing here. My own daughter, Suzanna, has been missing for over a year and a half. In terms of the cycle recycling, it is quite ongoing. The two missing cases I have followed here are this one and the Christina Morris case. I have focused more on the Christina Morris case because I live in Texas and my daughter went missing in Dallas. I have sometimes wondered if there could possibly be a connection because my daughter went missing around Labor Day, the year before Christina Morris did, and they were both very active in the club scene. AJ's disappearance and this sad outcome are fairly recent. Christina's mother is named Jonni, and I have seen her on television many times.
What is clear to me is that how long a child is missing makes a difference. Having a missing child is extremely exhausting (especially emotionally) and the longer it goes on, the more exhausting it is. Intially, when my daughter went missing, I did not realize that she was really missing. The man she had been living with was very duplicitous with me. Eventually however, what became my dominant emotion was sheer terror. Even if I could contain it during much of the day, it would come back at me at night in my dreams. Some mornings, immediately when I awakened, upon remembering she was dead, the crying jags would start. Sometimes they went on much of the day as I could get no help from the police, who did not take me seriously at all. My daughter is/was not a conventional person and she does/did not fit into their conventional criteria of caring. I never felt more like a non-person than when I tried to get the police to care about her.
I really do not think you can get over much of the pain of having someone go missing, even when that person is found. One of my friends lost her daughter to murder and it changed her utterly. She had to check herself into a mental hospital to keep from killing herself.
In these threads, I see people who judge the way that people grieve, and who go back and second guess the things that people should or should not have done who has a child missing. I have such empathy for AJ's family. We are all human; we all err; and there is no one right way to feel or act when you have a missing child. Even if there were an exact formula, I doubt that most people would be able to easily follow it. The shock, the confusion, and the uncertainty are too overwhelming.
When I was a victim advocate, I began to understand that some of the things that we said were like little bandaids on a gaping wound. "It is not your fault." (But people want to believe that all the right choices can be made in advance!) "You are safe now" or "it is over." (Not with this crime.) This crime is different. Every single parental misstep, no matter how minor it may seem to those would comfort you, comes back and haunts you. There is never just one closure to seek. It goes on and on.
We like to think everything can be healed. When we are children, our parents say: "Let me kiss that hurt and make it better." When we grow up, we realize that the real human tragedies are not at all like skinned knees.
So, I don't think it is that the cycles of grief don't apply, but just that they cannot really get started and completed. That would mean that closure (a body found or a child found alive) would start them. It ought to. But the reverberations of that time of terror go on and on. Who did this? How did they do it? Why did they do it? The trial and the utter loss of innocence if the guilty party was someone trusted. Alternatively, should the child be found alive? Why did you do this? Why couldn't you call me? How can I help you now?
I am very sorry for this family and I am especially sorry that the person responsible seems to have been someone that they all knew and that many of them may still want to trust and believe.
I just want to thank everyone for being relentless for AJ (AND for Zach) because AJ needs a voice and deserves justice! The majority of sleuthers here were on the right track (unfortunately) from the beginning with AJ not being a runaway. I'm on board with the majority regarding person most likely responsible based on facts presented thus far.
