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...)