For many parents of missing children grief is extreme, prolonged

The photo on the missing-children Web site shows what Jamal Abdul'Faruq looked like at 7 and what he might look like now, 18 years later at age 25.

Caramel-colored skin, a wide smile and eyes still bright like they were in April 1990, the year he and his 8-year-old brother, Basil, disappeared while playing outside their home on Clarkson Road in South Richmond.

Basil's 47-pound body was found three days later in a private landfill in Chesterfield County. He had been stabbed and bound with duct tape.

Jamal has never been found. No one has ever been charged in either abduction.

"You never get over it," said their mother, Tambra Ellis. She was raising her sons with their father though they no longer lived together. Everette Abdul'Faruq had remarried and had a new baby. The day the boys disappeared, their stepmother had dropped them off after they'd spent time with their father.

It was early afternoon, about 2:30 p.m. The boys wanted to go outside. Ellis, who worked a late shift at the Dupont plant in Chesterfield County, let them. She then laid down for a nap. When she awoke a couple of hours later, she went to look for them. They were nowhere to be found.

The next days and months were the worst of her life -- filled with police, television cameras, questions, suspicions. Her mother came from Tennessee to be with her for two weeks.

"I look back and I think about it. I really don't know how I made it," Ellis said. "I didn't have any family here. I didn't have a church home. My husband and I were not together anymore. I didn't have a boyfriend. I had friends.

"Somehow or another, I got back on the right path. . . . I guess my faith got me through it. I can't say I was a church-going person, but I already had instilled in me when I was a child, who watches over me, who watches over everybody."

. . .

Losing a child has to be a parent's worst pain, but it is particularly hard, in some respects, to make sense of a child being murdered. Child-abduction and murder cases in the news are a sobering reminder that there are people who will do the unthinkable.

The 7-year-old nephew of actress and singer Jennifer Hudson was found dead a few days after being taken from his grandmother's home. Hudson's brother and her mother -- the boy's grandmother -- were found dead at the home. The estranged husband of Hudson's sister Julia is in custody.

In another case, Cole Puffinburger, 6, of Las Vegas was reunited with family in mid-October after being kidnapped from his home several days earlier. Police suspect drug dealers kidnapped the boy to retaliate against Cole's grandfather, who allegedly owed them money. Cole was found walking alone in a Las Vegas neighborhood.

Ellis can imagine what the families have gone through and are still going through. Hudson's nephew was close in age to Ellis' own boys.

"You are never OK with burying your own kid," said Ellis.

Parents who have lost a child say those words over and over. That, and, "You never get over it." They are the ones who were supposed to die first, not their children. It is inconceivable that someone would take their child from them, would kill any child.

So many mourners came for the services for Ellis' son Basil that there was not enough room and some had to be turned away. In the days after the boys disappeared, the community rallied around the family. Churches held special prayer services. At Basil's funeral April 24, 1990, clergy from the Baptist and Islamic faiths presided.

"Allah knows how to punish!" said an imam, a Muslim leader co-presiding at the service and speaking of the harm that would befall the perpetrator. "He can punish like humans can't imagine."

. . .

The April 17, 1990, newspaper reported Basil and Jamal's disappearance:

"Police were searching early this morning for two black children reported missing from their South Side home yesterday afternoon. The boys, Jamal Abdul'Faruq, 7, and his brother, Basil Abdul'Faruq, 8, were last seen at their home. . . . Jamal is described as 4 feet tall, weighing 47 lbs. He was wearing a black Batman T-shirt, blue jeans and white tennis shoes. Basil is described as 4 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing 45 pounds. He was wearing a black and white striped shirt, black jeans and blue tennis shoes. Both have brown eyes, black hair and medium complexions."

There was no Amber Alert back then, but the search intensified quickly. A state police helicopter, bloodhounds and trained search teams were used. About 20 police officers went door-to-door seeking leads. Volunteers showed up to help.

A comment from a neighbor of the family seemed to sum up the premise people were working under.

"Two kids don't just get up and walk off the face of the Earth."

. . .

Parents of murdered children go through a range of emotions -- guilt, shock, anxiety, anger, depression. One researcher described the grief as "extreme, prolonged and unique."

"It does not go away, but life can go on," said Maisie Schmidt Kashka, a retired Texas nursing professor who in 1999 co-authored a paper about helping parents of murdered children cope with their loss. Kashka and the paper's co-author, Margaret T. Beard, both lost children to murder. Kashka's daughter, 15, was killed in 1984. No one has been charged.

The research suggests that the added burden of having to deal with the news media and the criminal justice system makes losing a child to murder unique. A crime scene might be shown over and over on television. Newspaper stories provide graphic detail, using words like mutilated and decomposed. Sometimes details of a case are reported before police have notified the family, further adding to a sense of victimization.

Grief counseling is recommended. Ellis said it helped, when she finally went. She did not go immediately.

"There were many times when I know for a fact trying to cope and deal with what happened to me, I didn't care whether I lived or not," Ellis said.

"A lot of times I am even amazed I made it to the counselor's office. I was a mess, a pure mess for a few years. For the love of God, I just got through it with His grace and mercy."

For a long time, Ellis said she questioned whether she had been a good mother. Counseling helped her see that she was. "It took me a long time to like myself," Ellis said.

. . .

Counseling had its place as Ellis coped with devastation no parent wants to imagine. But it only took her so far down the road to emotional healing. Normally not the type of person to open up easily to others, Ellis turned to friends to go the rest of the way.

"I had to open up to somebody," she said.

Rose Thomas was one of those friends. Thomas remembers Jamal as the brother who liked to play and have fun and Basil as the little intellectual who delighted in sharing bits and pieces of information he had learned. In that respect he was like his mother, said Thomas.

"Tambra always tells you she is full of useless information she picked up from reading the encyclopedia as a kid," Thomas said. One time when they were in the car together, Thomas recalled saying her throat was sore and how Basil started talking about the esophagus and anatomy of the throat.

"They were very different kids," said Thomas, whose son played with the boys. "I miss them. I know how brilliant they were, how funny. I hurt for her."

Thomas and Ellis have been friends since 1979. Both were in the same Army reserve unit. They were scheduled for deployment around the time the boys disappeared. Both stayed behind.

Thomas helped look for Basil and Jamal. It was a tough time for Ellis, she said.

"She was trying to hold on to hope. She was just managing day to day," Thomas said. Sometimes it was the practical day-to-day things that focused the grief and all that had been lost. Around tax time, Thomas recalled, Ellis was in a quandary about how to file.

"Things you don't think you'll ever have to ask."

Thomas' family has become Ellis' family. Thomas, a breast-cancer survivor, relied on Ellis for support. When Thomas' son, now 23, graduates from college next month, Ellis will be there.

Talking about the Ellis' boys is still difficult, Thomas said. There are no casual references such as "Basil would have liked this" or "Jamal would have liked that."

"Every time she goes back, it's not a crisis. It is always a special subject when it comes up," Thomas said. "I know she goes back there. You can't miss your children and not go back there."

. . .

Ellis keeps photographs of her boys near. Though she never remarried or had other children, she has nieces and nephews she spends time with when she can.

She has moved on to a life busy with friends, work and volunteer causes. She had to move on to live, she said. "A lot of people live it. They live in that time, they never left that time. As far as functioning in the here and now, a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people can't do that because they are so, so stuck. . . . I couldn't do that. If I had stayed there, I wouldn't be here today."

Some people know about the tragedy in her past. It is not something she volunteers. Even talking about the boys sometimes feels wrong.

"I hold them very dear and near to me. It's almost sanctimonious to even share what time I had with them with anybody," Ellis said.

"There are people in my life who have come and gone. If you are here long enough, you will hear the story."

Contact Tammie Smith at (804) 649-6572 or .