SUBANG JAYA, May 23 — Jacquita Gonzales has shared the same dream of her husband as many of MH370’s crew members’ kin have had of their spouses.

In it, Patrick Gomes is present before her but says nothing, engulfed in silence.

For more than two months since MH370’s disappearance, this same unsettling silence has ruled Gonzales’s world.

For more than two months, she has not heard the familiar beep on her phone when her husband used to send her a text message.

“We just try to be as busy as we can. When it’s quiet, that’s when it plays on your mind... that’s when you start reminiscing about all the memories,” she said when met yesterday.

Gomes, an in-flight supervisor, was among the 239 passengers and crew who were aboard the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines plane that went missing shortly after take-off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

An international search team has since focused its efforts in the southern Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia, in what has been described as the longest and costliest search operation in the history of modern aviation.

Gonzales, 52, said her family was already used to her husband being absent from home for extended periods due to his work commitments.

But it has been 75 days since MH370’s disappearance and the silence has begun to wear on them.

She said it has been pretty much the same for the families of the nine other crew members aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, with whom they’ve developed a close relationship as they support each other through the uncertainty that surrounds the fate of their loved ones.

“One day, we just sat down together and talked about it and we’ve all had dreams of our spouses just being there but not saying anything.

“Just today, my eldest daughter told me she dreamt of her father. She said he was wet, and looked like he was in pain... all you can do is hope and pray,” she said.

Gonzales, who helps her eldest daughter Nicolette run a day-care centre, said it is a daily struggle to stay positive but noted that there have been many random surprises that help her get through the day.

She said everything from the mass prayers by people of many faiths in the country, to simple hugs from parents dropping off their children at the day-care centre, has been a boon that has helped her stave off the hovering gloom of her husband’s absence.

But even then, it still gets a bit too much bear.

“Our three-year-old grandson would ask, ‘grandpa has been away for a long time now’. It’s tough, but all we can tell him is that grandpa is away on a very long flight,” she said, struggling to keep her composure.

Despite the challenges, Gonzales said she takes heart in the fact that the children in her life — from her grandson to those she minds at her daughter’s day-care centre — have not lost any hope in the possibility that her husband may come home.

“Some of the children come up and tell me that they pray that Uncle Patrick will come home. The children have not given up hope.

“Even the (acting Transport) Minister (Datuk Seri) Hishammuddin (Hussein) said that he continues to hope against hope... I’ll follow his tagline, hope against hope,” she said.