Ten years to this day, one of the worst travesties in America hit far too close to home.
I refuse here to rehash the story so many of you already know. I won’t tell you my story — yours is probably more interesting.
I’m not going to rail against Connie Chung and others in the media who were startlingly amazed that Oklahoma was able to pull together so well. I won’t give you a play by play account of the events that led up to one of the worst domestic terrorist attacks America has ever seen.
No words that I could write would do any of these topics justice.
Instead, I’d like to share with you the story of the last time I visited the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.
If you’ve never been, I recommend going late on a cool, clear April eve, when the stars have begun to wink into existence and the sky in the reflecting pool looks like a perfect mirror image of stark starlight contrast, as though within those shallow waters existed a duplicate night sky that one could dive into and fall forever.
The scene, of course, will be oddly taciturn.
Even as the Memorial is nestled deep in downtown Oklahoma City amidst the hustle and bustle of business and nightlife, something about the place seems to settle all aural stimulation down to merely the sound that we all know, permeating through the Memorial, rustling the sleepy leaves of the Survivor Tree, and carrying with it a vaguely funereal sound — the low moan of that ubiquitous Oklahoma wind.
Instead of stepping forward through time through the 9:01 gate, step backwards through the 9:03 gate and imagine if you will the tragedy that occurred in a matter of seconds reversing back into a simpler time, as though the rewind button were depressed on some cosmic remote control.
The smoke and debris so many of us saw on the news or even in person returning to the van that created it, the explosion turning around into an implosion, the shattered lives returning once again to the innocence that so many of us knew, and took for granted.
Baylee Almon, captured in a solitary moment as the symbol of the end of innocence, the infant cradled in the arms of the firefighter, who, despite his tears, his rage against those who would do this, his prayers, words and finally… silence, could not save her.
Imagine her, in a happier time, returning to her parents, before her senseless death, before she was carried out of the breech in the arms of a man who would have undoubtedly traded his own life for hers…
Imagine the gifts and memoirs from the fence returning to their creators, the flowers and artwork, the banners and flags, all disappearing as those who no longer know the tragedy, no longer see that as Oklahomans we are strong, we can support each other.
We just need the rest of the world to hold us, as a firefighter cradles the innocent infant, in a time when there are simply no more tears to be shed, and the emotional flames have died.
When we feel numb, and exhausted, and dry of tears from putting out the flames and trying to save our loved ones, we sought solace from outside our state’s borders. The fence is the reminder of how you responded, there to hold us, to comfort us.
If Oklahoma had been a child, you would have simply held us until the tears stopped, knowing that we had grown that day, that we were no longer so child-like, no longer laughing in the throes of innocence, now older and more mature, yet tired and more filled with wanton care.
Imagine the tears that I, and you, and all of us shed, returning to us, never having to have fallen from our eyes, the eyes that saw such horror.
Horror that could never be rewound or erased from our minds.
This day, ten years ago.
Originally printed in the Daily O’Collegian, April 19th, 2005
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