Sounds of Heaven Memoirs: Our Family Knows What It Is Like When A Family Member's Body Is Never Recovered. I Just Checked That The 7 Year Missing Is Still In Place. It Will Be 50 Year Anniversary This Year.

What does one do on a 50 year anniversary of a loved one that's body has never been recovered. I know this ... time may soften the blow a bit but the hurt and wondering are always back there in the back of your mind. I wonder if that jet black hair would have been all gray or a touch of gray now. Would my children have adored their uncle and found him to be fun because he was fun when he was alive. I have shared before how in my opinion my brother, Ricky, had a resembled of the the handsomeness of JRK Jr. No matter how much time passes by there still is the emptiness in one's heart of what would have become of them if they lived longer than 22 years old.

I wonder if the 4 survivors of the boat wreck are still alive. I wanted a few times to interview them since they were the last to be with my brother before that tragic accident near the Bermuda Triangle region is what we were told. I have the Coast Guard report my mother requested because she felt something just wasn't right with this story.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. I believe it was close to Good Friday and my mother received a phone call from my father swearing and using curse words telling her it was her fault Ricky was dead because she allowed him to go on that trip. Terrible, terrible, terrible can you only imagine what my mother experienced through finding out her son was missing via a cruel, cruel phone call like that. There was a tiny little blip in a newspaper looking for the family of him. For some reason they thought he was from another city in Ohio over an hour away from us. Then, because it was over the Easter weekend no Catholic mass could be held until whatever they said for a mass of resurrection could be held. There were about 500 people that attended that mass. We were all in some sort of shock. This death is not an average per say type of death a family experiences. Being interviewed in our home by local newspaper; receiving cards of consolation from his friends and people that he touched their life. My mom said they would tend to come in the mail when she just needed some hope and solace. I think 1 person said he talked a person down from jumping to their death if my memory serves me correctly.

That year I started college and would daydream of the day he knocked on my college dorm door and said he was on an island somewhere with amnesia and then found us again. That never happened sorry to say. See, when there is no body recovered it does leave some sort of hope in your heart but at the same time there is no final closure like when seeing a body in a casket or cremated and placed in an urn and experiencing the funeral burial. My mother eventually purchased I think it was a weeping cherry tree and a placard recognizing my brother's life. We would go and place a wind chime in the tree. One of my family members figured out how to tie the windchime a certain way so the winter winds didn't blow it away.

On special mile marker anniversaries of his death, my mother would give a donation to the local Croatian music radio program and request a special song be played for him. It was by Abba, "I Have A Dream." Eddie Bucar would honor my mothers dedication request even though the song was not a Croatian song that one would tend to hear on his radio program. When my mother went to be with Jesus, one of my children wanted a few of their Nana's music cassette tapes. One Christmas they were put into individual shadow box type of frames and guess which one I was blessed to receive. You guessed right, the song by Abba.

Then my father had a small life insurance policy on my brother and this is where the 7 year time frame comes in. You had to wait the time period of 7 years before one could declared legally dead of someone when there is no body recovered. I remember going to sign paperwork attesting it had been 7 years back then before a policy could be paid out, regardless of how little or large the policy amount was. I just checked and I think it showed that same time frame is still in place. Now, there may be different circumstances and states may have different time frames. I see the purpose in this so as to give proper time for one to possibly return or show up somewhere and people just can't go out there claiming all sort of things just to cash in on life insurance policies, selling properties, cars etc. Does that make sense to you, it does to me.

Can you see why I have empathy with the families and continue to pray for the family of Sebastian Wayne Drake Rogers and other children in that same category when I am made aware of them similar missing children via Dolly Vision, JLR Investigates & Bullhorn Betty (recently for her since she came to TN for the 2 year anniversary of him not being found.) I have also been praying for the family of Nancy Guthrie and for her also. It is so important in my opinion that a family receives some sort of comfort in knowing the where about of their loved on.

There is a good ending to my story if there can be one. I led my father to Jesus 3 weeks before he died. I led him in the sinners prayer and he asked forgiveness in sins in his life by Jesus and invited Him into his heart. Please do not judge so harshly but show empathy to the family because this will be something they will have in their lives until the answers are given and they could then find some sort of peace if that makes sense.

Several years ago I was not too far from possibly where his boat may have sailed in the Bahamas and I purchased a bouquet and my former husband and I went down to the beach and released it into the water as a final goodbye of some sort. I wonder if that is why I want to take a Disney cruise so I could not have a fear of this large body of water where my brother drew his last breath and then was no longer heard from. The mind can be a bit cruel at times and cause one to wonder if they had been eaten by some sort of shark, etc. in the water. Guess what the good news is ... God knows exactly where Ricky died in that vast body of water and when the trump sounds and the dead in Christ shall rise up and meet Jesus in the sky and the believers will then join them, my brother Ricky will be there and to that I say PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW.