Imagine the unimaginable.

From PFA2, with thanks.

Imagine the unimaginable. Your child is taken.

From the moment they're gone, everything changes. The world stands still, but at the same time moves on at an uncomfortable speed whether you're ready for it or not. You need all the help and support you can get, but you, your family, your extended family, your friends and neighbours, both current and historical, and everyone around your child ever knew suddenly becomes a potential suspect.

At a time when you need their love and support the most, you are suddenley being forced to consider people you have loved and trusted your whole life with the darkest of suspicions. Did they do this? Could they have done this? Did they have the motive or opportunity? Am I unwittingly being friendly towards my own child's abductor?

All of the time you are beating yourself up: your sleep deprived brain in tortured with what ifs, should haves and if onlys.

And the questions. Oh dear God, the questions.

Where is my child? What is happening to my child? Who did this? Why did they do this? What has my child done to deserve this? When is my child coming home? When?

It never stops going over and over in your brain. You can't help but replay the last time that you had together and the last words that you spoke. You take some little comfort that you told them, like you always do that you loved them more than anything else in this world.

Everything is a massive contradiction. The house can be full of people yet seem so completely empty. Every sense is numbed yet at the same time on heightened alert. You need help and support but people want to stay the hell away from you. You want to talk but can't bear to say the words aloud. You want a hug but don't want to be touched. You want to die but want to stay alive. You want to cry but you're frightened you'll never stop.

Whether you are religious or not, you suddenly find yourself talking to God. Well, not talking, more bartering, begging and pleading.

Please, please take me instead. Let it be someone caring but who just wanted a child of their own. Please, please let this one child be the one who comes home. I will do anything you ask of me, just let me see their face again and give them one more hug.

Every knock on the door or ring of the telephone makes your stomach churn and your heart ache as you wait to hear if any of your questions or your pleas will be answered. You want to know the truth , yet can't bear to hear it. So every time you open the door or answer the phone , you're willing it to be someone who is about to tell you that your child has been found safe and well and is on their way home, and then it's just another well-wisher, you can't hide your disapointment and just hope they will understand.

The first wave of official invasion of every single part of your life, both privare and public is so hard to bear: they even take your blood and samples of your hair. Then comes the second, the invasion of your missing child's room, to glean every possible insight they can. They take away anything that bear their DNA. It's necessary to course, but it feels like an invasion.

Then comes the media invasion, both welcome and unwelcome, as they search for the exclusive unturned stones. Every inch of your life is viewed through a scope, just beyond that front door.

You want to escape all the well-meaning attention, the media and the police, and lock yourself up in your child's room, just to feel near them. You want to smell them, touch their things and hold them, but it's way too soon and it hurts too much, so you dash past their door and into your own room, just for a moment's peace and quiet. You need to put the world on pause, just for a little while so you can try and take it all in and blank it out at the same time.

Ordinary life stands still---the cleaning, the cooking and the electricity bills. You can't go to work and you don't dare to leave the house. You want to be there to open the door and be the first face your baby sees as they come down the path, accompanied by the police.

You can't sleep properly. It's more like forced, short, unconscious gaps that you suddenly awake from. You hate sleeping because the waking is so hard each time you come round, you are forced yet again to acknowledge the terrible reality that is now your horrible life.

There isn't a moment, not a single second, that your child is not on your mind. People can talk to you, you have what they think are conversations with you, but most of the time it goes over your head. The only thing you can tune into is information about where your child could be, or what is being done to them.........

You want the whole world to stop. to know, to care, to help you make it right. When it doesn't you start to hate the world for getting on with its life as if nothing has happened.

Then more waiting as your spirits start to wilt, as the days turn into more weeks and the weeks into months. You sometimes feel like you are the only one who cares, the only one who won't give up hope, that maybe, just maybe your child will somehow make it home, safe and sound, where they belong.

(from "Where Angels Fear", a book by Sara Payne and Shy Keenan.)

Dear Lord this has made me cry.

Please God please send Madeleine McCann home, her family needs her, please end her nightmare and their nightmare and please end this circus and stop those cashing in on Madeleine's name to make money out of her.
Please give that one person that knows vital information the strength and courage they need to report what they know.

It's time that Madeleine came home.

wow...got to go make me a cuppa after reading that.Sarah Payne was a little girls murder i wont ever forget,i never forget that case,my heart goes out to her family and friends.A dear little girl who like many others wont be forgotten.

I was actually imagining myself in their position for a few minuits whilst i read that.Its gut wrenching isnt it,and it gave me a lump in my throat.

I don't think i could imagine a situation any worse than having my child taken away from me.

time to go and cuddle up with my little girl and read her a bed time story i think.Followed by a cup of tea.

Who would put someone through that amount of pain??

It upset me, too. I wonder how many anti's could put themselves in that situation? But no, they are all perfect, it would not, could not, ever, happen to them.

Clairsey I always put myself in the situation of people when I read things like that and then I have to snap out of it when the tears start to swell...I can't even imagine it without pain.

Vee, one of the things that really bothers me, is that there are antis who do acknowledge that Kate in particular (since it's always about Kate) is devastated, sad, upset, etc. And their response is not to think, oh maybe the press was wrong, maybe they lied, maybe the McCanns didn't do this, but instead is to come up with convoluted theories with no evidence -- like that Kate lashed out in anger and is now sad, or didn't know about a pedophile ring, or did and doesn't know what to do -- just these heinous, idiotic theories because the woman is standing there before them emotionally wrecked and they can't deal with it.

Oh, and Bennett did put himself in the shoes he imagined the McCanns to be in...and let's not forget how he came out, saying that he'd throw his grandchild's body off a cliff.

Their anguish two and a half years later and no further on must be unbearable.

It broke my heart.

The pain, the sadness.

It is unbearable for them.

Written by a mammy who as lost her baby to this sick twisted world.Words like those can never be put in such a heart felt touching and gut wrenching way by anyone who as never experienced the pain they have been forced to endure.

Bluj,

I used to love watching true movies.I still do,but only certain ones. I find myself emphasising with them soo much it plays on my mind.I to find myself having to switch off and snap out of it.

Claire

Like you I watch only certain 'true' movies. I never watch anything to do with children anymore. NEVER. Nor do I watch crime shows, true or not, about children. This only happened after I had my own children, before that they upset me a little, but now I cant get them out of my mind.

Me to Diane and i cant watch ones where parents are dying either and leaving their children behind.It gets me thinking too much. It puts me on a downer and i start thinking about my own life,what would my little girl do without me,what would i do without her,who would look after my child if i was die,and would they love her the same as i do and treat her just like their own.....upsetting thoughts.But they are just thoughts,for some they are reality's.My heart goes out to anyone who as ever lost a child.

Translated and printed. Very touching. Terrible plight of a beautiful little girl, Sarah Payne.

I hope the outcome for Madeleine will be different: she was never found.

I am just like the two of you. I should have been warned earlier in life at age 2 or 3 when I was watching Dumbo for the first time and flipped out, bawled and ran out of the room over the scene where his mom is locked in the cage singing to him...which I am getting teary about just writing and have never since been able to watch.

I agree, I can't imagine and I cannot even begin to imagine the depths of the McCanns' and other parents' pain. Especially the ones who don't know what happened to their child.

bluj1515 wrote:Oh, and Bennett did put himself in the shoes he imagined the McCanns to be in...and let's not forget how he came out, saying that he'd throw his grandchild's body off a cliff.

I cannot believe what I am reading here, is this true? I am profoundly shocked to the core, am I reading this correctly?

Yes, Rosie, you are reading it correctly.

I also remember an anti (cant remember which one, they are all as vile as the next) who also said they would cover up for a family member or friend if they killed a child accidentally then tried to hide the body.

I can categorically state that I would cover up for no one in such a circumstance.

This all makes Bluj's other post about sociopaths very timely, doesnt it?

I am shocked too, I've never seen this beforw. I know Bennett said that if something would happen to one of his grandchildren he would in panic cover it up by lying, but I have never seen his statement he would actually ....I can't even write it....

Rosiepops wrote:

bluj1515 wrote:Oh, and Bennett did put himself in the shoes he imagined the McCanns to be in...and let's not forget how he came out, saying that he'd throw his grandchild's body off a cliff.

I cannot believe what I am reading here, is this true? I am profoundly shocked to the core, am I reading this correctly?

Yes. He said it on that radio show he did, where the host destroyed him.

dianeh wrote:

I can categorically state that I would cover up for no one in such a circumstance.

This all makes Bluj's other post about sociopaths very timely, doesnt it?

Having a moral compass, knowing right from wrong, simple basic human lessons and feelings, Diane. The casual way they all assert that they'd cover something up makes you want to ask, "Well then why should the McCanns be punished for it?" It is such a stupid, vile comment, it makes no sense at all.

It is even more insane when you think about it this way: some of them insist they would cover up a child's death. But, ask them if they have ever, or would ever, leave sleeping children alone in a room while you eat meters away, from which you can see part of your apartment, and they scream child abuse.