Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. I love the lights, the holiday spirit, the parties, and the snow. This year, however, my Christmas cheer has been dampened a bit due to my dad’s passing earlier in the year.
I miss him greatly. I miss our chats and knowing that I can’t call him and say Merry Christmas is heartbreaking. It’s hard to deal with the loss of a loved one during the holidays. I always want to make every moment of the Christmas holiday magical for my family, but this year it has been a struggle. The only thing I can do is place a smile on my face and hope my grief doesn’t seep into the fun.
I know that I’m not the only person feeling this way. I have friends who have lost loved ones too. The best advice I can give is to go through the motions and feel your feelings. They won’t go away until you process that your loved one isn’t here anymore.
Today, as I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, they brought up Michael Vaughan, the five-year-old who has been missing for more than four months from Fruitland, Idaho. As a mother, I can only imagine the grief his parents are feeling, compounded by watching all the families celebrating Christmas this holiday season. Losing my boys is one of my biggest fears and one thing that I hope never comes to my door.
In looking into the missing kids in Idaho for this year, I stumbled across 34 kids, 13 of which are within two hours of Idaho Falls, and their parents must be frantic for news on their whereabouts. There are a couple of children missing from Idaho Falls and Bonneville County that I don’t think I even knew about.
Corah Carson of Idaho Falls has been missing since July.
Yasmin Hernandez has been missing from Bonneville County since October.
Harley Cortez has been missing from Idaho Falls since December 3rd.
Isabel Murdock of Bonneville County has been missing since November.
There are another seven kids who are missing from Fort Hall and Pocatello.
All it will take is one person to see one of these missing kids. From there, the police will have something to go on and you could be responsible for reuniting a family and making their Christmas wishes come true.
In the world of social media, the names of these kids and their photographs should be able to spread like wildfire. We should all be able to look for these kids to ensure that they can get home safely. When they say it takes a village, it really does. Please help look for these children. If we can spare a family this holiday season from the grief of missing their loved ones, we should do all we can to make that happen.
