To say that any of us knows what the families of the trapped miners have been through the past three weeks would be presumptuous.
My only life experience that is remotely similar was the drowning death of my Uncle Alonzo. It took about a week and a half to recover his body from a lake outside Soda Springs, Idaho. We went through the motions of living, but we were caught in a haze that alternated among hope, denial and grief. The longer the ordeal went on, we came to expect the worst, though. Word that my uncle's body had been recovered brought relief and heartbreak.
To that extent, I understand what the families are going through. But they're in a far worse position. Their loved ones may never be recovered. It may become necessary to entomb them in Crandall Canyon Mine. It would not be what most of us consider a proper burial, but there is no question that they're in the mine. It's not the ending the families have hoped and prayed for.
Sadly, many people's lives are filled with this sort of unfinished business. This past weekend, the parents of Rachael Runyan observed the 25th anniversary of their daughter's disappearance from a Sunset playground. Her body was found 21 days later in a stream near Mountain Green. She was 3 years old at the time.
Her kidnapper and killer remain at large. On Sunday, police announced they will re-examine the abduction and slaying. A $53,000 reward has been offered for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
The Runyans gave their daughter a proper funeral. And the family has honored her memory by working to establish the Rachael Alert, Utah's predecessor to the national Amber Alert notification network used to help locate missing children.
After 2 1/2 decades, losing Rachael is profoundly painful for her parents, Jeff Runyan and Elaine Runyan-Simmons. There are so many unanswered questions. They want justice for their child.
So did the family of Tiffany Hambleton, who was stabbed to death and dumped in a ditch near Salt Lake International Airport. Her body was found March 31, 1986, after she had been missing six weeks. She was 14 years old at the time.
The case was brought to trial 21 years after her death when DNA evidence linked a longtime suspect to the crime scene. A jury acquitted Dan L. Petersen, 44, of first-degree murder. During testimony, Petersen, who resides in Arizona, admitted that he had sex with the girl, something he had consistently denied over the years.
Jurors who spoke to reporters after the trial said there was sufficient DNA evidence that Petersen had sex with the underage girl (he was in his 20s at the time), but there was no DNA evidence of a murder.
Hambleton's family was distraught by the verdict. "I just wish there was closure," said Mary Delany, Tiffany's aunt, in reaction to the jury's findings.
Even when a killer is brought to justice, there are circumstances in which families are dissatisfied with the sentence he or she receives. Mostly, people are troubled by the relative brevity of a prison or jail sentence. But I am also familiar with one death penalty case in which a murder victim's relative was troubled by the death penalty itself. He didn't believe in it and said the state taking another life gave him no peace or closure.
Closure. What does that mean, anyway? Is it possible to experience closure after the trauma of a homicide or in the case of the Huntington miners, the very real possibility that these men may never be recovered?
Closure, to me, means that we somehow pack these experiences into a steamer trunk and shut it in the attic of our minds. I don't believe that human beings have the capacity for that. Rather, we pull out the trunk from time to time. And the strangest triggers can open the trunk. At least for me, the passing of time leaves me with more happy memories than sad.
If there's a lesson here, it's that, even under the best of circumstances, our time here is relatively brief. We need to invest in our human relationships and keep right with our friends and loved ones because we don't know what course life may take tomorrow. The best we can do is make sure there are fond memories to unpack from our respective trunks. Of that, we have some measure of control.
Marjorie Cortez, who believes peace is more attainable than closure, is a Deseret Morning News editorial writer. E-mail her at marjorie@desnews.com