Colin Brazier: Losing a child is every parent's greatest fear

Were she with us still, Madeleine McCann would’ve turned 18 this summer. Eighteen. Those of us old enough to remember the days following her disappearance might inwardly shudder a little at that. Especially anyone who was a mother or father when it happened. The idea of putting your child to bed, only for her to vanish from the face of the earth, is the embodiment of every parent’s deepest fear.That begins to explain why the Madeleine McCann story held Britain’s attention in the way it did. As the hours and days passed in May 2007, the growing desperation of her family and friends was hard to watch. And yet watch people did, in their millions.

It wasn’t so much mass hysteria, as mass optimism. After a couple of days most of us knew that the story was likely to end badly, but we are species built for optimism, and hope took a long time to fade.I mention this because of the news reported today that Madeleine’s mother, Kate, has returned to work as a doctor. That must be a mixed blessing. Kate gave up work to focus on the search for her missing child and, by resuming her career, Kate is implicitly acknowledging that any hope of finding her alive is effectively over.

Last summer German prosecutors identified a convicted paedophile, Christian B, as a suspect and said they presumed Madeleine was dead.The news that Kate was resuming her career put me in mind of my own daughter, Agnes, who was born a few weeks before Madeleine McCann in 2003; an event I actually missed on account of being stuck in Iraq. Agnes started at university over the weekend, one of thousands of British teenagers to leave home and begin the first real chapter of their adult life. Had she not been abducted in Praia da Luz, it’s likely Madeleine McCann would’ve been one of them.

As I left my daughter, I pondered on the importance of milestones, of how we take our leave from the ones we love. Why is it that we need rituals to mark rites of passage? In an era when fewer fathers like me will – to use an outdated phrase – give away their daughters when they marry, where are the new ceremonies that reflect life as it is now? It felt like a landmark moment, taking my child to university at the other end of the country and leaving her there for months on end. But one without ceremony.

And it reminded me, - and as a Mass-going Catholic I would say this wouldn’t I - that events in life sometimes need to be framed by ritual, lest they seem hollow and devoid of meaning. Otherwise we’re left sensing that something important has slipped by us unnoticed. That feeling you get when you walk down the stairs and miss the last step, uninjured… but unsettled.

Of course, a parent left blubbing as they pull away from their child’s campus is one thing. Yes, it’s an example of how ceremony isn’t keeping pace with change. But it’s not a big deal. Far more serious is what faces the McCanns. Without a body, without a conclusion, without a funeral - they are denied the comfort of humanity’s most important and necessary ritual.

That’s tonight’s Brazier Angle.