My youngest is home from college. She found a job that allows her to walk to work and back. As full of life as she is, energetic, spontaneous... she is also creature of habit. It's easy to fall into the rhythms of her life... to know when she's coming and going. So, a silent alarm goes off, a sudden tension tightens the invisible tie that binds us when she does not arrive home within a certain amount of time after closing up shop.
I, too, am a creature of habit. When she is not home when I expect her to be, I talk to myself, "They probably had to clean up a bit. Maybe they have some displays to set out for tomorrow. Maybe her boyfriend picked her up and they decided to go to a movie or something." I wait a certain amount of time before calling... an arbitrary number of minutes set by my internal mother's clock... and as each ticks by I worry a bit about whether that minute could mean the difference should something have happened to her. Then I call. "Where are you?"
I was reminded of all this and other times I've worried or wondered where my children were -- and I imagine I am not the only mother, or father for that matter, who was -- when I first heard the news of young Kelsey Smith's disappearance.
Now, four days later, there is an agonizing closure for her parents. My heart goes out to Kelsey's family and friends, not just for the loss of this beautiful girl and the horrific way she died, but for what must have been the most horrible four days of their lives. Not knowing, worrying, hoping that she'd come back home safe.
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