When a partner goes missing

On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, to Beijing Capital International Airport in China. The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations.
Most definitely among the 227 passengers were people’s spouses who were travelling for different reasons. They had left wives and children at home hoping they would make it back as always. Their partners have for the last two years been mourning but at least they are certain of what became of them.
There are, however, some people whose spouses go missing and they never hear anything about their whereabouts ever again. One such case is Phionah Barungi’s.

Her husband has been missing for four years. He left for a business trip to Rwanda on March 6, 2013, something he had always done, but the family has never heard from him ever again.
Barungi does not know where he is and is stuck on whether to move on with her life or wait for him to return.
In her book Thrice I Fell Yet Whole I Boldly Stand, she relieves her dilemma: “How does a single mother, who goes through a stressful day, with handsome men making passes, and hormones making calls, live through a month, and seven, and years without a warm embrace of a man, and the love … a loving man?”
She adds: “You get to realise that sleep is your lover and sanctuary of forgetting pain and oblivion.”
Barungi is not alone. There are many other people suffering the pain of a partner who went missing. And most times they are battling guilt of thinking they could be the reason their partners left.

Like Ali Male, a counselling psychologist at YMCA, says, it is a difficult situation when a partner walks out of a relationship because the other partner may star carrying around guilt of not knowing the reason their partner left.
But he says it is important for one to understand and accept that the other partner went missing. “It is fine for one to grieve and not suppress the emotions. The more you suppress it, the more it will happen. They can cry freely and be bitter,” says Male.
The grieving partner also needs to speak to a therapist to help them go through the pain. “The therapist will guide them but most times they will advise them to write their experience and pour out their heart, most especially writing those things they would wish to tell the missing partner. Expressing your emotions it is part of healing.”

Handling the children
When a partner goes missing it affects the children as well. Barungi says her three children have been traumatised by their missing father whose face some say they have forgotten. The oldest, she says, wakes up in the middle of the night and cries asking for her father. She does not know how to tell these children because they are too young to understand.
“I am hesitant on telling my children the truth. They will not understand because they are still young. I have lied to them that their father went to a far country and some day he will return,” she says.

Many times single parents deceive their children about the whereabouts of their other parent. Sometimes they tell them that they are dead because they may find it hard to explain to them what really happened.
“Children are always inquisitive and if you lie to them, they will still find out. It is important that you tell such children that their other parent loves them. Avoid talking ill about the missing parent because as time goes on, the child will realise and know the truth. If the child finds out you lied to them, they will not trust you and may think you are the reason their parent left,” Male says.

To Barungi the most difficult aspect of parenting is to answer the transition questions children ask. “I told my daughter that her father had gone to America and there were no phones so we could not speak to him. One day she asked her teacher whether there were no phones in America and the teacher told her the truth. My daughter got angry with me and refused to come home. She also said I had sent her father away. I was hurt but she said it and I could not blame her.”
Hellen Butayi, a counsellor at Nakulabye Restoration Church, advises that parents should tell their children about a missing partner depending on their age so that other people do not tell them.
“Give the children information in bits because as they grow older they will realise there is only one parent at home. Also be ready also to bear with the questions of why is daddy or mummy never home? You need to help them understand or someone else will give them false information.”

To wait or not to wait
There are several times Barungi says she has felt like giving up on waiting for her husband but her children remind her of the commitment she made because they are legally married. Her greatest challenge, however, is that she does not know whether her husband is dead or alive.
She is afraid of making any forward steps for the fear that if she moves on with another man, her husband may return and press charges against her. She is also afraid of developing false hopes and her husband does not return for good.
“There are men that make advances on me but I feel confused on whether to accept them into my life or still wait for my husband. He may press charges against me for bringing another man in our marriage,” she says.

The legal angle

According to Ladislaus Rwakafuzi, a human rights advocate and lawyer with Rwakafuzi & Co advocates, a partner can file for divorce from a partner who disappeared after seven years.
“If it’s a case of abandonment, four years is long enough for one to file for divorce. They can allege that the husband abandoned them because he has not communicated and is not providing for the family. However, if it is about a partner who disappeared, it must be after seven years.”
If you want to divorce your husband or wife, but do not know where they are, the court can end the marriage without sending them the divorce petition. You then need to show that you have done everything you can to find them, for example by contacting their relatives, friends, last known employer.

[email protected]