I sometimes joke that he got lost — like an errant sock in the dryer. Or like the child who did not heed her mother’s admonition’s to hold her hand on the escalator at the mall.

But the truth is he disappeared.

Nothingness.

A void filled; by the occasional and faraway, tinny voice of a random police officer following up on the missing persons report or that sick dull feeling as I wait for the coroner’s office to check their John Doe files.

Mostly, I pick up the pieces and construct meaning for those left behind.