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"A
Mantle for Remembrance, The Japanese Crane Cape"
Sadako Sasaki was an innocent whose legacy to us is the manner in which she
lived her life - fully. Tender, loving, and full of vitality, the Japanese schoolgirl laboriously folded paper cranes with the hope of overcoming the dreadful atomic disease, leukemia. Sadako never completed her dream of hope
- to fold 1,000 paper cranes, and to
be whole again. At the age of 12, she slipped into another world. Her classmates sent with her an
additional 356 paper cranes so that the full
count might aid Sadako’s entry into eternity. A monument in Sadako’s honor
stands in Hiroshima Peace Park, where every August 6th, thousands of paper
cranes pay tribute to the child who so loved life.
As I watched cranes fly above the shores of Japan during a trip there several
years ago, I understood Sadako and her thousand cranes. The massive eight-and
nine-feet wingspans of the birds are awesome, and the sight brought to mind
and heart the power of the will to live, and the hope we all have for tomorrow.
This cape carries my dreams and those of Sadako Sasaki - the symbol of our own
inner wills to live fully and abundantly. |
