The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines plane and its 239 passengers in March has never been explained. And until it is, the relatives cannot put their grief to rest

His mother’s clothes still hang in the wardrobe; no one wants to move them. “We still hope she’ll be back and everything will be just like before,” says Steve Wang. “I still have hope. Maybe 1% – maybe half a per cent – but I still keep the hope.”

More than nine months after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the families of the 239 passengers and crew members on board are no closer to knowing what has become of their loved ones.

An analysis of satellite data led Malaysia to conclude in March that the flight had ended in the southern Indian Ocean, with the loss of all lives. Yet a massive search of the seabed has to date failed to find any trace of the wreckage. Still less have the exhaustive coverage and international investigation yielded any clues as to why it disappeared.

“When I lose my iPhone I can use GPS to find it. How can you lose a plane? It seems ridiculous,” says the 25-year-old Beijinger. “If it was a traffic accident or something, and we knew who caused it and knew everything, it would be sad, but not like this. We’re still wondering where they are, what has happened. It’s hard to imagine, if the plane was flying until the next morning, what happened in the last few hours.”

Wang’s 57-year-old mother, whom he prefers not to name, had retired as a chemistry professor and was using her newfound leisure to travel and indulge her love of photography. She was returning from a trip to Nepal when she boarded MH370.

“She likes to take photographs; she likes even small things – a bee, a flower,” he says. “It isn’t fair. She’s kind to everyone; her students, her colleagues. I think most of the people on the plane are nice guys. I don’t know why this happened to them.”

Though Wang at time struggles to keep his composure, he and other relatives are determined to keep talking about the tragedy. “I want to keep this sadness or pain private. But I want other people to keep paying attention to MH370,” he explains. “We are afraid that maybe later people will forget; that’s the thing we’re most afraid of. The search must go on until they find the plane, but if no one cares about it, they’ll have a reason to stop. The investigation takes time, takes money, takes people – but it’s their responsibility to keep it up.”

The confusion and chaos that surrounded the early days of the search, and the continuing mystery of the plane’s disappearance, have left most relatives deeply suspicious about even the limited information they have been offered. “I can’t trust anybody – I can’t trust the Malaysian government; I can’t trust Boeing; I can’t even trust the [satellite] data from Inmarsat – it could be changed or edited,” says Wang.

He does not believe another flight could vanish in the same way after the attention paid to MH370. But he argues that the disappearance raises questions about the industry’s priorities, urging airlines to spend more money on safety rather than entertainment systems.

Despite the families’ anguish, they know they must go on with life, he says: “For the first couple of days I could not sleep, eat, drink, sit. I was ill, maybe not physically, but mentally. But I can’t pass this on to my loved ones, so I have to be strong – I have to look strong, at least.”

Over the months, he has cycled through emotions: “Anger. Maybe disappointment. Sadness – everything.” Now he feels his life is returning to a kind of normality. “It doesn’t mean I don’t love my mum or don’t care about it or want to forget about it, but I want to put it in another place,” he says.

He had not cried since the age of five, but sometimes he finds himself weeping when he is driving and a song comes on. He struggles when he eats his mum’s favourite food; when he goes to a mall where she often shopped. He doesn’t want other people to see, he says.

What he does want them to know is that they should cherish their loved ones while they have them. When he heard this kind of advice in the past, he acknowledges, “I thought, oh, there’s still plenty of time.” Now he recalls all the unfulfilled promises: to take his mother to a favourite restaurant; to go to the US together. “Just take care of everybody,” he adds. “Just be kind.”