Our community will always mourn for Faye Swetlik; now we must also work in her memory

There will be a public memorial tonight for Faye Marie Swetlik, the 6-year-old Cayce girl whose body was found last week following an agonizing four-day search after she disappeared while playing in her yard.

But the aching sense of loss that Faye’s horrific death has spurred will continue to resonate among all of us long after her life — one that was unspeakably too short — is memorialized and grieved during Friday’s service at Trinity Baptist Church in Cayce.

Raw pain

.The pain is raw.

That has been reflected in the heart-wrenching sight of the countless people who have traveled to place teddy bears and other items at an impromptu memorial site in the Churchill Heights neighborhood where Faye lived.

They are people from within and outside Cayce.

They are people who range from single individuals to entire families.

They are people who knew Faye and her family well — but also strangers who had been praying just as intensely that a little girl would somehow be found alive, safe and free from harm.

Deep pain

The pain is deep.

That has been reflected in the often-emotional words of so many others — from the various law enforcement officials who searched for Faye to a Springdale Elementary School instructor who taught her — who have mourned the stark reality that Faye would not be found alive, safe and unharmed.

Channel the pain

It is a pain that will likely elude any ability to fully describe.

It is a pain that will always elude any ability to make sense of why it must exist at all.

It is a pain that we as a community won’t ever fully erase from our collective heart.

But in truth we should never seek to do so.

We should seek to channel our pain in a way that ensures that Faye remains in our heart by what we do in her memory — in addition to how we grieve in her memory.

We can channel it by continuing to support the members of Faye’s family, who are experiencing heartbreak that no family should ever bear.

We can channel it by helping the numerous children’s advocacy groups that work relentlessly to protect our vulnerable, precious little ones from being targeted and victimized by adults — which is what authorities have concluded in linking a neighbor, Coty Taylor, to the abduction and killing of Faye (Taylor later took his own life as well).

And we can channel it by openly acknowledging and applauding the work of Cayce’s public safety department and so many others who have selflessly toiled throughout this tragedy — all of them need to know how much those efforts have been appreciated.

We will always mourn the loss of Faye.

Always.

Let us also ensure that what we do in her memory endures, too.

This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 5:33 AM.