Falling Thoughts

Such a beautiful morning.
Like that first one
Blue, blue sky
And bright, bright sun.
Small teasing breeze
Sifting through the trees
Children laughing, at play
Just as it was that day

That day before the loud
Shocking
Sickening sound
Of hate spilling over
The heart of our city
Wounding and killing
Evil without pity.

But this place
Defies that hate.
This place, like our city,
Is filled with love
And with pity,
Charity,
Mercy,
Peace.

It pours over you
As you walk
This quiet, lovely spot
Where once there was
Pain and destruction.
Finally I have the
Lovely image of this peace
Instead of the end of that
Ravaged building
In my mind.

I needed to see this,
Needed to actually walk here
To make peace with the sorrow
To no longer see
That ruined place
When I look up from the church cloister
So nearby.
Far too nearby.

Sleep well, dear beloved souls.
Dear little ones
Two of whom,
I knew their Aunt.
I still weep
Sometimes
For the potential lost.

This truly is the heart
Of this city,
Indeed,
Of the state.
The love poured out
On those who suffered loss
On those who came to help
On each other to see us through.
April 19,1995
Was the day I became an Oklahoman.

To See Changes
C.K. Armistead
9/24/16

I am still not adept
At reading subtle
Changes in the seasons
For I grew up without them.
Seasons, that is.
It is a new art for me
To pick out which details
I see and discern
What is to come
What I can learn
From the fact that
The south wind today
Is both warm and cool
The caterpillars I see
Are all
Well covered in  thick wool.
The pecan tree out back
Is generously throwing
Nuts around.
Which the squirrels are
Both eating
And hiding
With frenzied abandon.
The sycamore trees
Seem out to get me
Throwing pollen-laden
Ball bearing bombs
At me
To roll my ankle
And/or make me sneeze.
No leaves have turned as yet
No cool nights as yet have
Blessed us
But the calendar says
Fall has begun.

 Journal entry: Sept. 22, 2016

I stood this day upon sacred ground.
Ground where innocents were injured and killed
Where a community's innocence was lost.
I stood,remembering little ones I had never met,
but whose loss still made me weep.
I found the name of a friend on the Survivors list,
and offered a little prayer of thanks
That she survived,
That she is still here
To tell her story,
To be loved, to be my friend,
And my sister in Christ.
She, who stood with me at my Confirmation at St. Paul's,
Our church, just two blocks away.

The place is beautiful,
It is amazingly quiet
In spite of the city teeming all around it.
Every Sunday, and most Wednesdays for the past 21 years,
I have passed this place, spent time in its shadow,
In the shade of all that happened that day.
My church family survived a journey in the wilderness -
Worshiping in our parish hall for almost 2 years while our beautiful
Cathedral was rebuilt.
So much time has passed, but sometimes,
Especially when I walked into that sacred space of the Memorial,
It seems so fresh, I feel it all again.
There are children who have grown up, and new members of our church family, who do not remember that day, that time.
The horror, the hurt, the confusion is alien to them. The museum helps.  It makes that moring live again, gives visitors a sense of how ordinary the day was- 
Until 9:02 am, anyway, and how after that,
Nothing here was ever the same again,
Especially us.


My husband made his first visit to the Memorial today.  He hasn't been there since he worked as a volunteer with the contingent sent from Tinker AFB to help remove rubble.  I think he found some measure of peace with the fact that healing has happened in that place, that all the hands that came to help were appreciated and added to the love that surrounded our wounded heart that day, and in the weeks following.

Lovely, Sad April Once Again

April is a month that makes us feel vulnerable here in the Oklahoma City metro area.  No major tornadoes to remember this month, but bad storms, and the chance of tornadoes appears in April usually after a winter respite. 
No, April's lovely soft sunny mornings have been clouded for us by a memory of evil.  A memory that was burned into our hearts on April 19, 1995.  It was such a beautiful, sunny, pleasant morning.  Then the news reports started coming out about an explosion downtown.  The smoke visible on the horizon.  The worry about friends we knew worked down there.  The fear for the children we knew in the YMCA daycare near there, the church, which is only a block or two away.

I watched the news that morning in shock and with dread.  I saw familiar faces, most just in obvious shock, but one with blood on it.  It still hurts, to think about the damage to so many lives caused that day, the children lost, the sense of security we lost.  The many, many scattered pieces of our lives in downtown that had to be picked up and reassembled as best we could. 

Our church had significant damage, and it took us many years to complete all the restorations.  We never lost the most important thing, though, our love for one another, and our sense of God's love.  We are still in downtown, and we are still thriving.

Perhaps that is true of everything downtown, we are put back together physically, and for the most part, spiritually as well.  The Oklahoma City National Memorial has helped a lot with that sense of putting ourselves back together.  It is a very healing place.  A very peaceful and beautiful place.  The museum is very moving, jolting some of us back  to very clear memories of that day. 

Next year marks 20  years since the bombing.  VERY hard to believe.  Doesn't seem like it can possibly have been so long, and yet, the worst of the visible scars are long healed, and many of the psychological ones are well on the way. 

It still shocks me that anyone remotely human could have parked that truck there, under windows where they knew little children were playing, and set that explosion in motion.  Such hatred, and such misdirected violence did not solve anything.  They only presented a new set of problems.  This tragedy injured Oklahoma deeply, but it also strengthened our resolve.  That was the day I adopted Oklahoma, and vowed to stay help mend this broken heartland.  The great outpouring of love and determination to do the right thing that the world saw here was a true blessing.  People in Oklahoma are pretty tough.  You have to be to live in a place where the land and the weather turn on you at a moment's notice.  Makes us good at getting back up, at reaching out to give our neighbor a hand, at joining hands and standing strong.  When it REALLY matters, people here don't care about the things that usually divide us.  They remember that all we have is each other, good, bad, or indifferent, and they reach out and hold on to one another.  That's what made me adopt this place, that's why I stay. 
We saw it again last year when the tornadoes came.  The rest of the world responds to that by remembering that all ANY of us has is each other, and they send help, or come to help, and even though the events like the tornadoes and the bombing are horrible, they remind us that we are NOT alone or forgotten here. 
Today, the wind is high, but the sun is bright, and the sky is a beautiful blue that I have only ever seen in Oklahoma.  I don't know what Saturday will be like, since that is the actual anniversary, but this lovely morning reminded me of that lovely, doomed morning 19 years ago when I became an Oklahoman.