memorials


Today I'm in Oklahoma City. I got finished a bit early this afternoon so I headed to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. It was amazing. I was in high school when the bombing occurred. It, however, hit sort of close to home. One of the teachers had a sister who worked in the Murrah building but for some reason decided not to go in that day. From what I recall, she wasn't sick and hadn't planned in advance to skip work. One little decision and crisis averted.

The memorial was really well done. It takes you through the whole event and then the aftermath years later. I think it makes you feel exactly what a memorial should. I was on the verge of tears the entire time. It's so hard to imagine someone committing such a horrible act. Hard to imagine being in that building, being trapped or even what the people who walked away from it must have felt. The poor people who had to wait up to 41 days to get confirmation that their loved one had died.

But then it ends in hope. There are 1,000 metal cranes hung from the ceiling, in the spirit of Sadako. If you aren't familiar with her story, here's an except from the sadako.com website:

Sadako Sasaki, a young Japanese girl, on the threshold of adolescence, developed leukemia in 1955, from the effects of radiation caused by the bombing of Hiroshima. While hospitalized, her closest friend reminded her of the Japanese legend that if she folded a thousand paper cranes, the gods might grant her wish to be well again. With hope and determination, Sadako began folding.
As the story goes, she died with less than 700 cranes folded. Her friends finished the thousand for her... After the bombing, tons of paper cranes started rolling in. The significance wasn't recognized at first. Ten thousand cranes later, the significance was apparent (and then some).

It was somehow fitting that I saw this memorial to the worst act of domestic terrorism on a day that marks a more personal tragedy in my life. One to which the only memorial is (like some of you said in the last post's comments) my brother and me. (And just for the record, I didn't have a miserable, wallowing day. Just reflective...)

Comments

StaceyG said…
It's amazing how good things always seem to come out of tragedies eventually. I suppose that's a testimony to the human spirit.
1/11/2007 12:05 PM
Post a Comment

crowd favorites

100 things--thankful

For another list of 100 I blame Geek . I am thankful: 1. for having all five senses. 2. for being mobile. 3. that I'm smart. 4. for not dislocating my knees in quite some time. 5. that my heart issue is not as scary as it first seemed. 6. that I have lots of great friends (and all that that means). 7. for having the ability to make friends. 8. for having a close relationship with my brother. 9. that I was adopted. 10. for being employed. 11. for getting to work from home. 12. for being able to read. 13. for being alive. 14. that my bio-mother chose life. 15. for having a place to live. 16. for having a reliable car. 17. I live in Texas. 18. I live in a place that is not war-torn. 19. for the relative safety of the town in which I live. 20. that I have all my limbs. 21. that it's socially acceptable for women to wear makeup. 22. that I can afford most of what I want and not just what I need. 23. for my parents. 24. that I was raised poor. 25. for bug spray (not necessarily rela...
Read more

hey, would you like to see the nursery?

Image
After a very productive week/weekend, the nursery is just about done. I think the only thing I want to do is whip up a simple padded headboard and Hubby needs to trim down the legs on a little footstool. That's it! Finally! So without further ado... This is what you see when you walk in the door. Too bad the baby won't be able to appreciate it right away. (And I'll apologize right off the bat for having some wonky-colored photographs in this post. I just don't have the energy to fix things. At least on my monitor, the above pic is roughly true-to-life.) Would you like to see that awesome rug a little better? Man, I love it. It was the one splurge for the room but it has such great colors, fun animals and designs, and is round. All my criteria were met. Love. Here's the corner with the crib. I wanted a clean, simple, modern, white crib. I hate to admit it but we ordered it from Wal-Mart. Hey, at least we didn't have to enter an actual store to get it. It was ine...
Read more