We were early to Oklahoma and stopped at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. The memori
al is large, elegant and tangibly still. The design is cleanly geometric, with straight lines and right angles only where necessary; The building next door remains as it was directly after the bombing-- scarred, its fire escape torn, twisted and gaping, black bricks where the windows were blown out. Opposite stand 168 thin geometric chairs, in memory of every person who perished. Between these rests one large, rectangular reflecting pool, flowing slowly as it mirrors the puffy clouds silently floating above. Two large walls mark the entrance and the exit, set apart with rectangular doorways that frame each other perfectly. The entrance is marked 9:01, the exit 9:03. I searched my brain for what those numbers could mean, but came up blank. There is no ceiling on the memorial, just wide open sky.
Wandering among what used to be the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, I tried to imagine the people who had worked there, and those who lived to mourn their deaths. It was difficult, somehow, to wrap my mind around it, to really understand the impact such a tragedy wreaked upon the city.
A few weeks ago, we stood at Ground Zero in New York. That gaping hole hit me directly in the heart. I understood what an attack on my country meant; I felt the emptiness, the pain and the utter disbelief still hard to articulate. Why, I wondered in Oklahoma, was it so hard to comprehend this place?
The Surviving Tree stands to one side of the memorial, stretching its full branches into the sky. This tree survived the bombing and is now surrounded by a wall expressing the endurance of the American spirit that is rooted deeply in faith. All around it stand smaller trees. These trees were planted to look as though they are rushing toward the surviving tree, to represent th
e firemen, policemen and others who rushed to help when the bomb went off.
I pictured men and women rushing headlong into the blazing furnace, the rubble, the twisted and melting remains of a building all for the slim hope of saving somebody. In that, a small part of the devastation this place memorialized began to take shape in my mind.
I understood the utter devestation, but I didn't feel it. I could sympathize, but empathy was strangely lacking.
On the fence outside, people have left small mementos-- wreaths, flowers, key chains, all sorts of things. Under the picture of one woman was a beautifully written mini-biography honoring her warmth and kindness. The author listed his sources of comfort, one of which was simply the short but potent time this woman had been on earth. We are grateful for the time we did have, he wrote. Had she lived 100 years, they would have been far too short.
Further comfort came, they wrote, from the outpouring of love that followed such tragedy, proof that even evil stirs up good.
The stillness of the place is striking and it mingles loss with hope. As for those times marked into the walls, I found upon leaving that the attack happened at 9:02am. The entrance, 9:01, marked the last moment of innocence for a city which, by 9:03, had been changed forever.
al is large, elegant and tangibly still. The design is cleanly geometric, with straight lines and right angles only where necessary; The building next door remains as it was directly after the bombing-- scarred, its fire escape torn, twisted and gaping, black bricks where the windows were blown out. Opposite stand 168 thin geometric chairs, in memory of every person who perished. Between these rests one large, rectangular reflecting pool, flowing slowly as it mirrors the puffy clouds silently floating above. Two large walls mark the entrance and the exit, set apart with rectangular doorways that frame each other perfectly. The entrance is marked 9:01, the exit 9:03. I searched my brain for what those numbers could mean, but came up blank. There is no ceiling on the memorial, just wide open sky.Wandering among what used to be the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, I tried to imagine the people who had worked there, and those who lived to mourn their deaths. It was difficult, somehow, to wrap my mind around it, to really understand the impact such a tragedy wreaked upon the city.
A few weeks ago, we stood at Ground Zero in New York. That gaping hole hit me directly in the heart. I understood what an attack on my country meant; I felt the emptiness, the pain and the utter disbelief still hard to articulate. Why, I wondered in Oklahoma, was it so hard to comprehend this place?
The Surviving Tree stands to one side of the memorial, stretching its full branches into the sky. This tree survived the bombing and is now surrounded by a wall expressing the endurance of the American spirit that is rooted deeply in faith. All around it stand smaller trees. These trees were planted to look as though they are rushing toward the surviving tree, to represent th
e firemen, policemen and others who rushed to help when the bomb went off.I pictured men and women rushing headlong into the blazing furnace, the rubble, the twisted and melting remains of a building all for the slim hope of saving somebody. In that, a small part of the devastation this place memorialized began to take shape in my mind.
I understood the utter devestation, but I didn't feel it. I could sympathize, but empathy was strangely lacking.
On the fence outside, people have left small mementos-- wreaths, flowers, key chains, all sorts of things. Under the picture of one woman was a beautifully written mini-biography honoring her warmth and kindness. The author listed his sources of comfort, one of which was simply the short but potent time this woman had been on earth. We are grateful for the time we did have, he wrote. Had she lived 100 years, they would have been far too short.
Further comfort came, they wrote, from the outpouring of love that followed such tragedy, proof that even evil stirs up good.
The stillness of the place is striking and it mingles loss with hope. As for those times marked into the walls, I found upon leaving that the attack happened at 9:02am. The entrance, 9:01, marked the last moment of innocence for a city which, by 9:03, had been changed forever.