LONDON CALLING

My phone rang repeatedly while I was in the shower. It rang again soon after I got out and I answered to a familiar voice saying Hello. It was the Band Director calling from London. It was the day before my son Eric was to return from a weeklong trip with the High School Marching and Jazz Band. Two conversations immediately began. One dialogue was internal and one was external, requiring control. I knew something was very wrong. As he spoke the Mommy alarm began to go off in my head while my mind was running rampant through an inner list of things. What went wrong was not on the list though. I thought illness, accident, drinking, smoking, partying…….The Director was saying missing. My son was missing. He had turned the corner with a group of ten and then he was gone. I immediately recognized that missing meant “can’t find him” companion phrase of, “don’t know what happened.” It was different from Lost. I wanted Lost. Lost belongs with Found. There are Lost and Founds all over the world in schools, workplaces, libraries, etc……Lost includes the hope that sooner or later the partner Found will arrive and Reclaim can take place. It’s a Holy Trinity of universal energy. My son was missing and it happened in a flash. The Director wanted me to know should Eric call home I could reach back to the group, from Ramsey, with Eric’s location. I hung up shaking like a leaf on an oak tree when the November wind blows and the leaf is frightened about where she will land. Just like the leaf must wonder what happened to the warm summer sun, I wondered what happened to my son. Shaking and feeling helpless as well I heard my husband come home and I went down to the kitchen to tell him. He too was so upset that I had to leave the room. It was my own need for damage control. Confusion and fear had filled up the kitchen and it was a recipe of unknown outcome. I needed to walk away, light a candle and say a prayer. Saint Anthony is invoked for all things missing, lost or in need. I lit the candle with a match that sparked all over my bedroom. I begged him to see the light in my darkness and answer my call to find my son, my sun…..an incomprehensible hour went by and the phone rang again to let me know he had walked into a hotel in London and that they were going to pick him up. He had been lost and was now found…. I could only thank his guardian angel, St Anthony and the Band Director for this happy ending. The echo though, from London Calling, has left me to carry a tiny teardrop of the understanding of the nightmare when someone becomes missing, not lost. Even now I still reel from the clash.