After yesterday’s Blog post about our training exercise with search and rescue, I received this email from a friend:

“So…I don’t mean to be disrespectful or anything and bring up tough emotions, but when you and your son were recently ‘lost’ in the woods, did you ever think about your sister, Cindy?”

She knew Cindy’s body had been found near an abandoned building with an adjacent lot “thick with tall bramble bushes and trees”, about 1.5 kilometers from the bank where police found her car, after she was reported missing for two weeks.

And she also knew (because I had shared more details of my story with her) that when Cindy was missing, police had used a hovercraft to search along dikes in case Cindy had drowned or her body had been disposed of there.

My father had wanted a grid search that included vacant lots and abandoned houses, but that never happened…Cindy’s body had been found purely by accident.

And she also knew that when my family and I were picking out Cindy’s last resting place and my brother had found a potential spot, I had been unable to approach it because I got the shivers and started to cry—with the way the nearby tree extended its arms and created darkness below, it had reminded me of where Cindy was found (and I had been to THE SPOT where Cindy’s body was found).

So since I had lived all that, my friend also wanted to know what my motivation was for doing the SAREX 2008.

No, believe it or not, when my son and I were hiding in the woods, I didn’t think about Cindy…I wasn’t afraid…none of that!

I’d had a great adventure with my not-so-little son (he’s virtually my size)…

“That was the most fun thing we’ve ever done together, Mom!”

“Really!” I was stunned…and proud. (We’d played tic-tac-toe and hangman and told stories, and read…yeah, it had been great to have one-on-one time and pretend to be lost together…to get scratched by thorn bushes, bitten by bugs, exhausted, overheated…!)

So my first motivation had been to have an adventure with my son and give him hands-on experience with Search and Rescue.

But because I know how excruciating it is to have to wait for a loved one to be found, I had wanted to experience it the other way around—to be the one lost…and in my case lucky enough to be alive to wait for help (and hopefully gather information that could help someone if they are ever lost—I’ll share what I learned in another Blog).

And of course, to help the SAR techs improve their rescue procedures…well that’s a dream come true because if it helps improve service for real search and rescue events…!

Opportunities for healing and growth surface in many forms. For me, SAREX 2008 was just that. And I’m sure more will pop up throughout the rest of my life…and yours, if you leave yourself open to them.

Thanks for the SAR t-shirt, Ron. Even though you didn’t know this, you’ve given me another healing piece for my emotional puzzle of Cindy’s death—this experience helped heal the frustration I’ve felt about not having been able to help Cindy, or find her when she went missing…and even I didn’t realize it until my friend’s question prompted this retrospective.

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James