This is an opinion column.
What is normal now? What is normal when your child hasn’t come home? What is normal after weeks of fear and uncertainty, anger and anguish, and helplessness? What is normal after you’ve turned to your faith for your only comfort and peace?
“Our lives will never go back to the way it was,” Yashiba Blanchard told me recently. “Our other kids’ lives won’t go back either. We’re lacking a piece of our family.”
Blanchard’s 19-year-old stepdaughter, Aniah, has been missing for more than three weeks now. She was last seen by a family member on October 23 and was reported missing a day later. Somewhere in there, as we’ve seen over and over on the grainy surveillance video, she was at a Chevron convenience store in Auburn, where she is a student at Southern Union College.
Ibraheem Yazeed was there then, too, the video shows. On November 7, Yazeed was captured in Florida by U.S. Marshalls and charged with kidnapping Aniah. He was extradited to Lee County and now sits in solitary confinement in a local jail. He is next scheduled to appear in court at a preliminary hearing on November 20, this coming Wednesday.
Yashiba and her husband Elijah, Aniah’s father, have lost count of the sleepless nights, the meals they forgot to eat, the moments when they could do nothing but … do nothing. Except maybe jump in the car and make the 98-mile trek to Auburn from their home in Shoal Creek. Yet again. To meet with Auburn Police Chief Patrick Register or Lee County District Attorney Brandon Hughes. Yet again. To hear whatever new information the two men may offer. Or don’t. Again.
“What do you do in a situation like this?” Yashiba asks. “How do you start back to the day before the phone call? How do you move forward? You’re stuck in limbo. We want some type of resolution and we’re not getting it.
“Do you stop right here? Do you let life stop right here? What do you do?”
At the encouragement of a friend, they turned to the Bible—Psalms 23, specifically.
“’He maketh me lie down in green pastures.’ We did find solace in that,” Yashiba says. “Whatever we’re going through—even through the valley of the shadow of death—He’s with us.”
Last week, Elijah and Yashiba did something they hadn’t even pondered since hearing of Aniah’s disappearance: They returned to work. “Baby steps,” Yashiba calls it.
Baby steps towards some sort of normal.
Both are successful entrepreneurs. For 14 years, Elijah’s A&E Service has specialized in commercial and residential air conditioning, heating and refrigeration. (Leveraging skills he learned while serving in the Air Force.) Yashiba’s law practice is in Birmingham.
They were consumed, understandably, by Aniah’s disappearance and unable to focus on their respective firms. Last week, that changed.
“On Monday Elijah told me go to check on my office, which was being run—bless them both—by my paralegal and secretary,” Yashiba says. “Elijah was with me. I stayed for about an hour. It felt good to be there. For at least that time, I wasn’t thinking about [Aniah].”
Which did not come without some guilt. Yashiba, a friend, as I’ve previously shared, asks if it’s “OK” to allow her mind to wander from her daughter at all—even for just an hour.
“Absolutely,” I say. “Absolutely.”
She took files home that day and worked from there for the rest of the week. On Thursday, Elijah returned to his firm to handle duties that had lagged since a manager was recently terminated. It was the first day since Aniah’s disappearance, in fact, that Elijah and Yashiba had been apart at all.
“We are business owners, but we were worrying about Aniah, looking for Aniah, going back and forth to Auburn, “We had to step back in [to work]; if not, they were going to shut down.”
Aniah Blanchard (left) with father Elijah and brother Elijah
Customers and clients of both firms, as you would hope, given the awful circumstances, have been understanding, as have others.
“The judges in Jefferson Country have been awesome,” Yashiba says. “They’ve all pushed our cases back and reached out to ask if I need anything else. Clients are saying they’ll wait on me to come back. That’s amazing, to be honest.”
Elijah’s customers are patient and understanding, too. “He’s gotten phone calls from customers who’s said they’re not going to anyone else. They’ll hold it down until he gets back to work. He’s got some pretty loyal customers.”
Elijah and Yashiba have four children. Chelsea, 27, is at home until starting medical school; Casey, 24, lives at their home, as well; Elijah, 20, is a junior business major at Auburn; and Aniah.
Both parents are most concerned about Elijah, who was closest to his younger sister. “He’s very to himself,” Yashiba says. “He’d rather stay in Auburn than come home; being here reminds him of her. He’s been talking to his dad a lot. Dad is very worried about him.”
What is normal now? Elijah and Yashiba do not know but they’re finally taking ‘baby steps” towards finding it.
“That’s what it will be for a while,” she says. “We’re trying to juggle everything. It’s crazy, but that is where we are.”
A voice for what’s right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama, Roy’s column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj