Colin Madsen: A Decade Without Answers

It has been more than a decade since the death of Colin Robert Lloyd Madsen. There are still many unanswered questions surrounding his death. We (his friends and family) know that his death did not result from his own volition. His life was taken from him, either directly with intent to kill or indirectly through torture and neglect while being illegally detained.

Regardless of intention, the result was the same: his life was taken from him and he was taken from those who loved and adored him.

Colin was, and in a residual way still is, one of the best human beings I have ever met. Though we always speak well of the dead, we should have spoken just as well of them while they were alive. One cannot simply express the compassion this young man had.

For those of us who practice Buddhism (a deep interest of Colin’s), we resolve ourselves to walk and speak with loving-kindness, to live in the moment, to attach ourselves to nothing, to give more than we receive, to kiss the Earth with our feet, to acknowledge every living thing, and in-so-doing offer it our love. Colin made the effort to do these things as often as he could.

I know no one gentler, no one more supportive, no one more the embodiment of peace in every step than Colin.

More than 10 years have passed since his death. The sun rises and the sun sets, the moon phases through another cycle, and yet we remain without answers and without justice.

The loss of a life is often compared to the flame of a candle being snuffed out, a flickering little flame fighting against the darkness for some small amount of time until it can no longer. I don’t think candlelight represents Colin very well, he’s something more than that.

Perhaps more like starlight, temporarily obscured by a dark cloud, vanishing from our eyes, but still he remains there somewhere just beyond, glowing as he always did, not for the mere 30,000 sunrises and sunsets of the average human life, but for trillions, just waiting to be seen again, if only you had the patience and the clarity to see him, too brilliant to be long forgotten, too resilient to be long hidden from the world by a mere wispy little cloud.

Not every path we walk will lead us to closure, sometimes the path just keeps on going and we long for the hand we once held, the now vacant hand we have come to know as grief. There is no timeline for bereavement, nor for anger, nor any emotion. No one can tell you when it’s time for you to stop feeling anything. Especially when the circumstances resulting in that loss remain unresolved.

I strongly believe that for as long as we remember Colin, then he is still with us, a light that forever carries on. But for his mom, Dana, a battle carried on long after his passing. A battle against people, nations, to recognize and amend the wrong that has been committed and to prevent it from happening to other families. The people responsible for not just Colin’s death, but the attempt to cover up their actions, mislead those seeking the truth, and to tarnish the very nature of his character. These people remain unscathed, and it is an outrage.

Colin was like the modern version of a 19th century progressive philosopher, it was like he was simultaneously born in the right and the wrong century. He was uninterested in things that modern young adult Americans get immersed in, but at the same time he was very forward thinking and open to new experiences.

We get caught in the gravity of the character and behavior and charm of certain people during our lifetimes, drifting in and out, seeing how they have grown and shifted and blended and evolved and faded and pulsed and ignited over the years. Over time they are transformed, not just in their own mind but in ours, they become way more human, way more real than they had ever been before.

Sharing your thoughts and feelings and passions is a remarkable gift that feeds your own soul most importantly, and that of those who hear you. The people that cherish you as more than a mere passing amusement will always find their way to you if you live your passions and open yourself to the highs and lows of that experience.  This is what Colin did on a daily basis.

He touched so many lives, not just with his incessant desire to know how others think and feel, but with his honesty and openness. He did not just seek inspiration, he was inspiration. There can be nothing more extraordinary than to know that you have inspired others and touched deeply their very souls, something so commendable and worthy of every accolade.

I have come to learn that the people we meet throughout our lives become a piece of us, a part of our own story, and so when we lose those people we lose a part of ourselves. Of course some fragment of who they were remains with us, but we also have this emptiness, like some kind of hunger pain, but in our heart.

We remain forever changed by the grief of our loss. Sure, the sun still rises, the birds still sing, sometimes we laugh in momentary lapses of the reality of the horror we live, but it will never be the same, it always looms overhead like a dark cloud. Nothing can be as it was before, impermanence is the only absolute.

To help you learn more about Colin, I want to share the below documentary film which I played a small role in helping produce. This film is incredibly important and personal to me, and while I do not feel that any film could ever express the injustice, the violation, the anger, or the grief of loss that all of Colin Madsen’s family and other friends have felt since 2016, I do feel that it justly highlights what that terrible experience felt like at the time it occurred.

Watching the completed film left me shaken and disturbed because it brought back all of the things I felt at the time they happened all those years ago. There are photos and video footage in this film I have never before seen, not because I did not previously have access to them but because I chose not to expose myself to them in fear that they would replace my last memories of a living, breathing Colin with the cruelty of humanity.

I will never forget the panic, the fear, the anxiety, the wrenching sensation inside of me during those days he was missing, nor will I ever forget the morning I learned his body had been found. I was standing in my kitchen during the early morning hours before sunrise, scrolling through social media hoping to find someone posting that Colin had been found alive.

Instead, I found a post announcing that his body had been found, that Colin was dead. I collapsed to my kitchen floor, in shock, in grief, in regret, in so many emotions.

When you watch this film, you will learn my experience was not unique. Everyone who knew Colin shared in the horror that unfolded during his vanishing, his death, and the years that have followed.

For me it was a catalyst, a moment that marked a shift in my perception of life, in my understanding of love and loss, of what it means to endure the human experience, primarily because it was the start of a series of subsequent deaths in my family and among my friends, even my pets died. For several years, it felt as though it would not end until everyone I knew was dead.

More importantly, this film also gracefully touches on the beautiful person that Colin was, the person that I want others to know him as. So often in stories about crimes we find ourselves captivated by the depravity of the criminal act and the villains who perpetrated it, we rarely feel deeply connected to or understand who the person that lost their life was, they just become another victim.

For the past 10 years I have repeatedly shared my thoughts and feelings about Colin, about who he was, why his life mattered and still matters, why the injustice committed against him was so vile and why he was the least among us to deserve enduring it. Please take the opportunity to learn more about Colin, the person, and not just Colin the victim. He was so much more than his death.

I do not believe I will ever know or meet someone in my life again more benevolent than Colin. You would’ve had to spent time with him to truly understand. In some small way, I feel that this documentary grants viewers the opportunity to glimpse into his human nature. I hope you will share this documentary with others, not solely for the sake of justice but also because in-so-doing you will also share his light.

This post was a follow-up to a previous publication from 2017.