Re “The face in the waves’’ (Page A1, June 3): Evan Allen’s piece regarding Michelle Murray-Mendez and Steven Mendez’s missing daughter, Jaimee, was a beautiful tribute to a loving family’s agony, as they deal with the realization that a beloved family member — at once a child, sister, and mother — is missing, and as they know in their hearts she will not return to them.

A recent situation in my own extended family made Allen’s piece all the more compelling, as much within her account was experienced by my sister and her children. They searched and worried and feared for their beloved family member — a young man who was a son, brother, nephew, and grandson — for more than four months before learning that what they feared had come to pass.

Allen’s writing was amazing in that she captured how a family becomes paralyzed by this unexpected and devastating experience and consumed with thoughts of what has happened or may happen to their loved one.

After days, weeks, or months of not hearing from the missing person, the discovery of the body hits with an unexpected force. One thinks that all the time waiting will shield you against the shock, but it does not. Jaimee Mendez’s family knows this, yet also realizes that it is better to know, and to be able to bury your loved one, than to forever wonder.

Maureen Malcolm

Boxford