"We come here to remember..."

Last Sunday, Chris took me to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, and it was a very upsetting experience.

 For those of you who are unaware of the events surrounding the bombing, I'll give a little bit of a background.

On April 19th, 1995, 168 lives were lost, including 19 children under the age of 6, and even more lives were changed forever.

At 9:02am, a Ryder rental truck that had been parked in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Downtown Oklahoma City was rigged to explode. The bomb went off, killing many of the employees, visitors, and children in the on-site daycare, all due to two men that were upset with the Government.  

A third of the building was completely destroyed and the rest of the building was left unstable and dangerous for the bombing survivors. Prior to the September 11 attack, this bombing was the most deadly terrorist attack, with the most property damage, on American soil. Today, it remains the most deadly act of domestic terrorism in United States history.

In order to enter the memorial, you must pass through the gates of time. One is stamped with 9:01, which represents the moment before the bomb went off...the moment of Oklahoma City's innocence.  Across from the first gate, is an identical one with 9:03 stamped on it, which stands for the minute just after the attack, when hundreds of lives were changed forever as well as the hope that came from the horror in the time after the bombing.

Between the two gates is the reflecting pool, which occupies the street that the Ryder truck was parked on. It is a shallow pool of gently flowing water to provide a quiet area for peaceful thoughts and to soothe wounds.

Beside the gates and the reflecting pool is the field of empty chairs. Each chair rests atop a glass base represents a life lost in the bombing, with smaller chairs for the 19 children killed and a name etched on each one.

The chairs are arranged in 9 rows for each floor of the building. Each chair is placed on the field according to where they were in the building at the time of the bombing.

By day, the glass beneath the chairs allows the chairs to look like they are floating, and by night, lights glow beneath the chairs as beacons of hope.

For the holidays, each chair was decorated with wreaths and ribbons. The field looked like a graveyard, and though it was a beautiful sight with the 168 chairs light up and decorated, it was also very sad to look at. It seemed like a graveyard on the field, and it was incredibly upsetting to look at all the lights for the lives lost, and to think of how many more lives were forever changed in the worst of ways.

As Chris and I went through the memorial, I realized how easy it would be for someone to do something like this again. If someone decided to destroy another federal building, or even a mall or apartment complex, unless they were acting strange and nervous, how would we know? How could we stop them from repeating this terrible act?

Who is to say that we are truly safe anywhere?

I know that we can't live in fear, but it's a terrifying thought that our lives, and the lives of our loved ones are partially in the hands of those terrorists and murderers. If they were to snap and finally go though with another bombing or other act of violence, our lives and out loved ones lives could essentially be over.

There are school shootings, mall shootings, and acts of violence like this all the time unfortunately, and it's incredibly scary to me.

Again, I know we can't live in fear, but it's a very scary thought to have in the back of my mind.