Missing In Action

If I am in bed and hear the sound of a helicopter somewhere nearby, it seems a fair bet that it’s hunting for a missing person. Yesterday I positively knew it was, because the person concerned was Bill, an older member of the congregation. Bill had left the house while his wife Jenny was out, and even when she returned she assumed he was napping upstairs, and only discovered he wasn’t there when she went to check whether he’d taken his medicine. I got to the house about 6.30 by which time Bill had been absent four hours: by this stage there were three police cars in the road, Bill and Jenny’s daughters had arrived, Sarah our pastoral assistant and verger Rick were present, and so were a variety of friends and neighbours. We agreed, in the end, that Bill was probably still close by, and perhaps sleeping somewhere: he has a number of health issues and isn’t that mobile. In fact it seemed to be those issues which had driven him out: a note and his clothing seemed to suggest he wanted to walk away from the challenges and not come back, but without his meds he was unlikely to get far without falling asleep.

As the evening wore on and I carried out my allotted task of calling Bill’s phone, I feared for him more and more. The circling helicopter meant he still hadn’t been found at gone midnight. I wondered how long the police’s procedures give them before they would start dredging the river. I slept as (almost) always but had particularly weird and uncomfortable dreams, though nothing clearly to do with the situation at hand.

But I got a text at 6.30 in the morning: Bill was home! He was found nowhere local at all, but miles away, having managed to get to a bus stop and then as far as a town in the next county. This was a particular surprise as Jenny thought his fear of covid would have kept him away from public transport, but perhaps he wasn’t thinking about that. I had already begun imagining what Sunday would be like, having to bend the story of the Wedding at Cana around the loss of someone we love, and had a tear. It would not only have been loss, of course, but the knowledge that the soul lost would have left this life in despair, and that those who loved them knew it too: almost too terrible to think about. Thank God we don’t have to.