Finding Freedom by Helen Quilley
Originally Posted: 11 December 2001
What is this place? I feel as if I am being carried by something other than my own will toward these children. Their faces are radiant and peaceful…how I wish I could be like them, forever anchored to the innocence and wonder of childhood.
A sudden realization swarms me, it is here that I will find my sister. I continue drifting through the children and I see her. She’s 14 years old and more beautiful than any photo or memory can convey. She runs toward me and I can’t help but stare. We hug and I feel every haunting of that night leave me. She’s okay. Without a word passing her lips, she tells me I have other things to do, other paths to follow, I am free now to pursue them. It suddenly doesn’t matter how she got here. Years of my own agony are over knowing hers ended long ago….maybe now I will sleep.