It is the gnawing, stabbing pain I get in my gut every time I deal with this kind of story.
I will never get used to it. Or at least I hope I don't.
There is nothing more unnatural that a parent burying a child.
That is now the fate of the parents of Cayman Naib. The 13-year-old from Newtown Square had been missing since last Wednesday night.
These stories all too often do not end well. I had the very same feeling about this one, once again hoping I would be wrong, fearing that I was not.
The worst kind of news was confirmed Sunday night. After five days of searching, Cayman Naib's body was found covered in snow in a shallow portion of a creek behind his family's Newtown Square home.
Over the weekend hundreds had responded to the family's call to join in a search for the eighth-grader.
That is the part that grabs me. Not the fact that the community rallied around a family in need. We see that happen all the time. It is the best part of our nature. After the discovery of Naib's body, hundreds gathered again last night for a vigil in his honor at Shipley School, where he attended classes.
The part that stuck with me is that Cayman Naib was in eighth grade.
I was a bit puzzled by the different pictures of him released by by the family. In a couple he really did look like a teeanger. But in several he looked very much like what he was, a very young kid. An eighth-grader.
A lot of people no doubt will wonder what happened in this case. We'll likely get more details later today, when an autopsy is completed.
It won't make any difference.
Caymay Naib is gone. And he was in eighth grade.
It's just so damn sad.
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