Hope Amidst Tragedy, or Something Like That

Yesterday, I got up early. The brakes on my car have been squeezing for a couple of months now, and I finally went to get them inspected. So, I sat down in the waiting room with Rising Sun (a good book, so far) and got down to what I anticipated being a good hour or two of reading time.

Fifteen minutes later, Rick the repair guy comes in and calls my name, then proceeds to tell me that my brakes are fine. The front brakes have about half a pad left, and the rear look like they've been done recently. So, with my car's clean bill of health, I left quick car and proceeded to drive around for the hell of it, because yesterday morning, the weather was just about perfect, 70's, mostly cloudy, light breeze; let me tell you, it doesn't get much better.

As I drove down the Lindsey extention with my windows down, singing along with the radio, enjoying the day, it dawned on me that for the past ten years or so, I've lived a mere 18 miles from a national monument, and had never been. For a history buff like me, I find that unacceptable. So here's the perfect opportunity: I've got a few free hours, nothing to do, and a lovely day for walking around outside. So, I turned over to the interstate and headed north, toward downtown, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

In the past, mostly on trips up to Edmond, I'd seen the sign for it, and thought that I should go sometime, but never actually considered it until yesterday. Really, the more I thought about it, it's the kind of thing I wanted to do alone. I could move at my own pace, be reflective if I wanted, be incredulous if I wanted, or bawl like a little girl if I wanted. Really though, I was less interested in the memorial than I was in seeing the place where it happened, refining my mental pictures of that morning years ago, getting a sense of what it must have been like for the people there.

The drive up was splendid. The interstate was moving pretty fast, and the Buzz played four or five good songs in a row, boy, was I surprised. I no problems getting there, there's clear signage for it downtown. It took me a bit of driving to find a good parking space, but that was the worst of it. I plunked a dollar in the meter, and walked over.

The memorial itself is rather lovely. I walked up from the east, where all you can see of the actual memorial as you approach is the gate to the east of the reflecting pool. Once inside, I was greeted with a peaceful scene, with lots of trees, well-manicured grass, the reflecting pool, and then the things that actually seem monumental: the empty chairs, the gates, and the wall of the platform surrounding the survivor tree. I spent the next hour strolling around the grounds, reading plaques, remembering, and just enjoying a beautiful day in the city.

While it wasn't really a very emotional morning, there were a few things there that made a particular impact on me. The first was the crappy building that would have been across the street at the time of the attack, but now houses the memorial's museum in addition to some other offices. The south wall of the building is dented, with chunks missing here and there, some windows bricked over, and two graffiti. To see some of the damage that the bomb caused still standing in a building today brought a strange sense of the past for me. The graffiti only enhanced that. The first message I saw pre-dated the bombing. It read "Don't enter the alley." There is no alley there; the building on the other side was so damaged it had to be torn down. The other message was painted on the wall by an emotional rescue worker. It read "Team 5, 4-19-95, We search for the truth. We seek justice. The courts require it. The victims cry for it. And God demands it!" These two messages from the past went a long way in helping me realize the depth of the destruction caused that morning.

Another area of impact for me was the fence line. Along the west side of the memorial, two sections of chain link fence that were part of the fence blocking off the lot during the cleanup and demolition of the Murrah Building still stand, complete with the mementos left there over the years by victim's relatives, school children, and tourists. There were things there from at least 15 states, and numerous little trinkets and pictures. What left the deepest impact though, was a picture with a note attached from the family of a New York firefighter who had done rescue work at the bombing and died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. That's more tragedy than any person needs to see in a lifetime.

Something that really amazed me there was the survivor tree. The tree is a large elm that was in the parking lot across 5th from the federal building. There's an aerial photo at the memorial of the area taken the day of the bombing. The parking lot was littered with debris; cars were thrown against the back of the lot, and just standing there was this huge tree, seemingly unaffected by the days events, a tree that I could look over and see as I studied the picture, standing there in much the same fashion, only yesterday, it was surrounded not by destroyed cars and pieces of building, but by families taking pictures, and park rangers talking to tourists. It, like the graffiti and the fence, gave a sense of continuity to the whole thing. It was a reminder of what happened there, not of the tragedy, but that life goes on in the face of tragedy.

Another such reminder, and by far my favorite moment of the morning was when I was coming back up from the fence on the west side of the memorial. As I got up near the reflecting pool, a mother duck with 1, 2, 3, 4... 9 babies in tow waddled into the pool. They didn't get any swimming done, the pool is only two or three inches deep, so they just walked through the pool, paying no attention to the people there. A little kid to my right likened them to Jesus, walking on water. They crossed the pool and went up into the field of empty chairs. The rest of the time I was there, that family of ducks frolicked among the names of the dead. It was a more profound, however unintended, symbol of life going on among horrible tragedy than any memorial designer could have hoped for. In fact, I would be willing to bet that had ducks been suggested, the designer would have been scorned, laughed out of the boardroom, and viewed as a disrespectful idiot.

After about an hour there, the sun came out and it started to get hot outside. I had seen pretty much everything besides the museum, which I was going to skip anyway. I gave the site one last look, then walked back to my car and headed for home. I left the memorial feeling like I accomplished what I came for. It definitely reminded me of the reality of the bombing, something I think a ten year old kid watching the news can't really comprehend fully. I found it quite amusing that I took the most emotional impact not from any of the symbols left there by the hands of men, not by the somewhat morbid empty chairs, not by the 9:01 and 9:03 gates, not by the artwork of young children, but what amounts to two accidents of nature. Things that you can't anticipate, in this case a sturdy tree and a family of ducks going about their business, brought me more emotion as reminders of life than any of the reminders of death that I saw that morning.