Editorial: A father's unbearable anguish

Joe Tumanako, father of missing woman Annabell Tumanako; and her son Andre Tumanako.

My heart goes out to Jo Tumanako.

As a father of daughters, I would be distraught if anything bad happened to one of them.

Yet Mr Tumanako has suffered the unbelievable tragedy of losing his little girl. She may have been a woman, but to any father, daughters remain your little girls forever. Worse, still, for Mr Tumanako is that he does not know what happened to Annabelle.

I could not imagine a fate so cruel. It must be terrible to lose your baby who you saw develop from those first moments to an adoring (and adorable) little girl and then watched them blossom into a beautiful woman.

As the Greek playwright Euripides put it: "To an old father, nothing is more sweet than a daughter. Boys are more spirited, but their ways are not so tender." And that is the whole point, fathers and daughters have a connection.

Mr Tumanako has lost someone dear and the cruel thing is that he will never have closure until he knows exactly how his daughter died. Annabelle Tumanako, a 35-year-old mother of five, disappeared from her Maraenui home, a house for mentally unwell people in the community, on June 23, 2007.

Yesterday coroner Peter Ryan held an inquest into her death but, as he put it, he was forced into the "unhappy situation" of not being able to make a conclusive finding. He concluded she died sometime on or after June 23, 2007 at an unknown location, while the cause of death also remained open and unknown.

Mr Tumanako said afterwards that he knows that "someone has taken her" but he held out hope of one day finding her body.

I hope he gets his wish and that finally he can have some peace.