Frozen in time: Families of those on missing Flight 370 cannot shake off their grief without answers

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Over the past decade, Grace Subathirai Nathan graduated from law school, got married, opened a law firm and had two babies. But part of her is frozen in time, still in denial over the loss of her mother on a missing Malaysia Airlines plane in 2014.

There has been no funeral service, and Grace, 35, still speaks of her mother in the present tense. When she got married in 2020, she walked down the aisle with a picture of her mother tucked in a bouquet of daisies — chosen because of her mother’s name, Anne Catherine Daisy.

The Malaysian criminal lawyer has become one of the key faces of Voice 370, a next-of-kin support group, as she channeled her grief into keeping alive the quest for answers in the mysterious disappearance of MH370 that has ripped many families apart.

“In terms of going on, I progressed in my career, in my family life… but I am still trying to push for the search of MH370 to continue. I am trying to push for the plane to be found, so in that way I haven’t moved on,” Grace said in an interview. “Logically in my brain I know I am probably never going to see her again, but I haven’t been able to accept that fully, and I think emotionally, there’s a gap that hasn’t been bridged due to the lack of closure.”

The baffling disappearance of Flight 370 still captivates people around the world. The Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on March 8, 2014, but dropped off radar screens shortly after and never made it to Beijing, its destination. Investigators say someone deliberately shut down the plane’s communications system and took the plane off course.

The jet is believed to have plunged into a remote part o f the southern Indian Ocean based on satellite data, but a massive