One of my few work colleagues: found his missing son after 9 days

[Des]

I had tears rolling down my cheeks today when a colleague (named Norman) at our small company stopped at the office this afternoon, to let us know he found his son.

 

I just checked, and it is 9 days since the day an older child went to the school and did not find the young boy there. The child was found at Baragwanath Hospital here in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

I told my 2 friends when the child went missing, and I told my girlfriend. I did not mention it on this forum, but I was about to share it with all of you, would have shared how I felt, if the child had not yet been found. It is just so much less horrible to do this sharing with the child already found. Not that sharing is horrible, perhaps I mean less awkward, but I will leave my words as typed, with these added words to explain.

 

This has been a horrible and a stressful experience. I'm crying again, as I type (I've just opened the gate for the 3rd employee to leave [i say 3rd employee, because the others who work for the company, are members of the family who own the business, so they are co-owners, and there are 4 of them, plus 3 of us employees, making up the full team of 7])

 

My feelings are of huge relief after the helplessness of knowing someone whose child is missing.

The child is apparently uninjured, except for a scratch on the leg. He is 7 or 8 years old.  Norman (the dad), does not know if his son was abducted, or was taken/sent to hospital by someone who failed to inform a parent. The child has been sickly, has been in-and-out of hospital (but not that hospital, I guess).

 

I was just feeling so horrible    about being this close to someone with a missing child. We know it happens to strangers, but for it to be closer than that just does not feel as tolerable. Norman is not a close friend of mine. I see him almost 6 days per week, he repairs machines (technician), and he sweeps, tends the grounds and does building maintenance and painting.  I travelled to his village and stayed in his home 2 nights so I could attend his wedding (which was when the found child was about a year old), and Norman had been working here about a year by then. I have worked here since January 2007.

 

Norman, his wife and sons are black and have a home in a rural village (and a rented place in Tembisa), I am white (the categories of this divided society are relevant, and people here in South Africa would understand this story better, knowing our ethnicity). My two best friends are female, one of them a black prosecutor (State's attorney) of major business fraud cases, the other a white divorced (formerly employed, now living from a modest family trust fund) mother of 2 adult sons (one working, one taking drugs), and my girlfriend (last one, for as long as she lives  ) is black and from Durban.

 

**Edit: the owners of the business which employs me: are from Taiwan (they are Chinese).

 

My relief is in huge part for myself. Now I don't have to think how to treat a man with a missing son! Norman did not come to work while his son was missing, perhaps he will be here on Monday, and now I don't have to stress about how to speak to him (my title is Sales Manager, and my role includes supervising Norman and the third employee (who mostly does the work of a technician, and has few other duties, and is also black).

 

When the son was missing, I said to my friends how I hated imagining what I would feel if that were my son. I had started to tell the few customers who know Norman and asked about his absence, had started to tell them the horrible story (I left out the story the first few days, so it was more bottled up, then, and more suppressed in my mind). I think it was for the best, to continue to work and produce value for the company.

 

Our founder (the patriarch of the family who own this family business), pressed some notes into Norman's hand as Norman sat here, telling us the few details he had, and now I am glad I kept the money rolling in, so we can offer some of the money in support of a man whose latest family problem is worse than I have ever been close to.

 

One of my 5 sisters took her own life many years ago, just before I turned 18, and for my mother (born 1920, has outlived my dad, is still alive) to bury a child, was a terrible pain for her to bear, but in her case: she saw the crumpled corpse and saw the scattered ashes of a child feeling no more pain.

 

Maybe I am not doing well at expressing my emotions, but I am feeling them, I am feeling them.

 

Here is a link to the thread where I introduced myself: Desmond Gorven

 

I'm going to put a link from there to here also, because this is a really important event in my life, and because I have added so many details about my life, here, to give context to the story.

 

Ask what you want to ask. I will stop now and go home. Work ended at 17h00 SAST and it is after 18h00 now (now that I have reviewed and edited this post).

 

I won't answer here until about 10h00 SAST tomorrow, later if my tea-break is delayed for any unexpected reason.

[Spenc]

I find it very interesting and understandable that you relate this tragedy to yourself.  Such as, 'What if this were my son missing?' and 'How do I go about dealing with Norman now?'.  I always kind of wonder where the line in the sand is when a person is close enough to you that their problems become your own versus their problems cast a new perspective on your own life.  ANd I'm curious what members of this forum and Stef himself would say about a self-aware person's empathetic reaction to such a situation.  I know that when people have deaths in their families or lose their jobs or stuff like that, I find it very difficult to say and think the right things in the moment to show empathy.

 

I'm curious if you would be able to go more into detail about this.  For example, you also mentions feeling horrible that someone close to you was suffering this way.  What would you say the ratio was of concern for Norman compared to the uneasiness you felt for yourself that this could happen to your own child or that it would make things awkward for you at work in the future?  And I'm curious how you managed to put this out of your mind.  Like, were you able to go home and watch a comedy on TV and laugh, or find yourself engaged in the plot of a drama or was your mind preoccupied with the missing child?  What did you learn about your own ability to empathize so far through this experience?