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Brad Resvick has heard rumours that his big brother was beaten to death, his body tossed in a chipper like a worthless piece of wood.

He has visited psychics and tried to enlist the help of U.S. talk shows in his search for Paul Daniel Resvick, who was 19 when he vanished from a restaurant parking lot in southeast Calgary on March 26, 1999.

Police suspect that he was killed after an encounter with organized crime. But the case has gone cold.

"My father refuses to accept that he's gone until he has proof," Mr. Resvick says. "I'm 99 per cent sure he's gone, but in the back of my mind, there's that slight 1 per cent chance that he's not."

Seven years later, he is still looking for an explanation, or at least a body, so he can finally put his mind, and his brother, to rest.

"Every time I hear 'remains found in Calgary,' I call people. Is that him? Is this our turn?"

In her 1969 book On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described the stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. Over the years, the stages have been amended, expanded and tossed altogether as the loss of a loved one can be measured neither in logical steps nor duration.

But how do you categorize or rationalize the feelings of someone for whom there is no obvious end? No body. No funeral. No involvement of the courts.

"People never really grieve. There's no finality," says Pamela Fitzgerald, director of the Canadian Centre for Bereavement and Grief Counselling in Toronto, "They never give up hope. It's like betraying the person if they start to grieve."

We have all lost someone we care about, but in statistical terms, few of us understand what the family of a missing person endures.

On average, about 62,000 children under the age of 18 are reported missing annually, according to National Missing Children Services in Ottawa. Runaways make up the vast majority, followed by parental abductions. Kidnappings by strangers are rare -- three a year on average -- and those kids are usually killed.

It's not clear how often or quickly cases are resolved, but last year, 22 per cent of cases were closed within a month.

There is no national registry for missing adults. Each police force has its own data.

In Alberta, about 7,000 people, including children, are reported missing annually and more than 90 per cent of cases are resolved quickly, RCMP Corporal Wayne Oakes says.

A small fraction are bona-fide missing persons, he says, but some don't want to be found.

Cpl. Oakes remembers the delight he felt in 1979 when he discovered that a driver he stopped on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Calgary had been reported missing in Ontario. Concerned about the man's worried family, he asked the driver about making contact.

"He got a little bit surly and said, 'I'm not missing. I know exactly where I am. It's none of their damn business,' " Cpl. Oakes recalls.

The family was notified that the man was alive, but without explanation. Others still wait for their calls out of the blue.

Crystal and Bruce Dunahee have spent the past 15 years wondering what happened to their son, who disappeared from a school playground in Victoria when he was 4. They cope with the support of friends, family and therapy, but mostly they move forward believing that Michael is alive.

"You have the odd psychic person that says the opposite of what we feel, but we just carry on," Ms. Dunahee says.

Their backs were turned for just a few minutes on March 24, 1991, when Michael vanished.

Police hope that a new computer system, a fresh set of eyes and a $100,000 reward announced last week will finally spit out a solid lead.

More than 11,000 tips have been logged. The new reward prompted more than 80 calls from around North America. Thirty of them were quickly dismissed, says Constable Rick Anthony, who has been on the case since Day 1.

Investigators haven't settled for merely finding a body. Abductions for an "instant family" are rare, but they do happen, Constable Anthony says. Occasionally, kidnap victims, including Elizabeth Smart and Shasta Groene, long written off by the public as dead, have made their way home.

"Until there's proof to the contrary, we go with the belief that he's out there with somebody," Constable Anthony says. "We're ever hopeful. Never say never."

In 1995, Vladimir Bondarenko, a documentary filmmaker, set out to capture the story of six teenaged boys who on St. Patrick's Day that year grabbed a case of beer, stole a boat and disappeared on Lake Ontario.

While some families were quick to accept the worst, others were slower to acknowledge the deaths and some have never given up hope.

"One family is sure it's a trick," Mr. Bondarenko says. "People still believe the boys are not dead because there's no boat, no bodies."

Mr. Bondarenko was so moved by filming Vigil of Hope that he took bereavement courses and is now a grief counselling facilitator.

On March 26, 1999, Brad Resvick was celebrating his 18th birthday in a Calgary restaurant looking forward to his first legal drink with his brother, who never made it to the party.

Mr. Resvick didn't know that earlier that day, his brother was trying to make amends with a biker gang, which he robbed a few days earlier of a large quantity of marijuana.

According to Mr. Resvick, his brother was egged on by three friends, who together broke into a home that was linked to organized crime. The next day, according to police, three men forced their way into Paul's residence to find the person responsible for the theft.

Paul wasn't there, but on March 26, he and friends went to a McDonald's parking lot in the city's southeast, where Paul met with an unidentified man and got into a truck. He was taken to a home and then driven outside the city, apparently to guard a marijuana grow-op as payment for the theft. Police believe that he refused to comply.

Staff Sergeant Barry Cochran says police don't want to give the family false hope, but they are still hoping to give them closure.

"We know there are people out there with information," Staff Sgt. Cochran says. "Only when their moral values, conscience or lifestyle changes will it force them to come forward with information."

Mr. Resvick, now 25, says his brother had problems, but he didn't deserve this fate and his family doesn't deserve the torture. "You can't get over it," he says. "You can't wake up one morning and pop a few antidepressants and get on with it. How can you get over something like that? I have no answers. I have no body. I have nothing."

In her 20 years of helping people, Ms. Fitzgerald, of the Canadian Centre for Bereavement and Grief Counselling, says nobody gets over a loss -- they just learn to live with it.

But a missing person causes incomprehensible trauma. People still need support, but adjusting to the new environment and reinvesting their emotional energy is more difficult.

"It's like living with an open wound," she says.

Hope continues to pick at it.

Dawn Walton is a member of The Globe and Mail's Alberta bureau.

Where to get help

For more information, or to find a counsellor or bereavement group:

Canadian Professional Counsellors Association, Vernon, B.C.,

250-558-3323 or 1-888-945- 2722, http://www.cpca-rpc.ca

Canadian Counselling Association, Ottawa, 613-237-1099

or 1-877-765-5565, http://www.ccacc.ca

Centre for Suicide Prevention,

a non-profit organization linked to the Canadian Mental Health Association, Calgary, 403-245-3900, http://www.suicideinfo.ca