The Darkest Day Of My Life

It began as a nice April morning and I remember performing a yoga routine and feeling good. I had just started doing yoga a few weeks earlier and in a small yet comforting way it was giving me a sense of peace. It felt good to be more limber and to feel more calm. Things were looking up.

I was taking a shower when it happened. Amazingly, with the water running and being a good twenty miles away the rumble still reached my ears. Something abnormal had clearly just happened. Some sort of strange sonic boom or maybe even a plane crash.

I don't recall exactly what I was thinking inbetween that moment and when I finally turned on the television. Did I rush through my shower or did I remain calm, perhaps believing that my ears had somehow deceived me, and continue with the normal routine? All I remember now is that I turned on that television as soon as I got out of the shower and a news helicopter was already hovering over the Alfred T. Murrah building, black smoke twisting into the air, and the first speculation I heard from the reporter was that a gas line must have exploded.

Within a minute the enormity of what happened had already sunk in. I knew, we ALL knew, that many lives had been instantly lost. Fifteen minutes later I was driving to my office down the Broadway Extension, heading south out of Edmond toward downtown Oklahoma City, listening to radio reports as I watched that cloud of smoke drifting away to the west. Suddenly a pick-up truck rushed past me, hellbent and well over 100 mph, and I could only speculate that the driver had a loved one down there. Of course, anybody that knew someone working down there was scared to death. At that point no one could know for sure which exact buildings had been involved so there is a chance that his loved one survived. I will never know.

The rest of that morning I watched news reports and it became obvious that there had been some kind of exterior explosion, possibly a bomb, and then reports surfaced that another bomb was about to go off. The cameras showed all kinds of people fleeing in panic, women with their dirty purses and their hair all messed up, wild-eyed policemen, reporters who decided that they didn't necessarily need to become a part of the story. But when that scare subsided soon thereafter the stories of the survivors began to surface, how the lucky had escaped, about the search and rescue that was being valiantly conducted, and then came the news of the day care center.

The children.

I picked up my dad for lunch that day. He knew nothing of the explosion and hadn't heard anything despite being located only a few miles north of the site but that's another story. We didn't eat anything. Instead, we drove towards the Murrah building and got as close as we could, maybe ten blocks away. From what really amounts to just a bump in the road we had a clear view of the north side and it looked like a monster had just taken a huge bite out of it. Tatters on the edge were still blowing in the wind. You could only look for a minute or so and then you felt a twinge of shame, understanding that there were dead bodies underneath all that debris. Maybe someone still alive and struggling to breathe. Right now. Only ten blocks away. We drove away slowly, helplessly, a vile sickness spreading deep inside our guts, and how can you really ever drive away from something like that? I went home around 3 pm and continued watching reports with Lou Ann, Nicholas and Benjamin. You thanked God for that. Your family safe. Simple yet so damn essential. The sky was darkening and threatening to rain. The gloom congregated above us, through the television, through our radios. On our faces, in our sad eyes that could not look away. Despair.

Nick had a baseball practice scheduled for later that afternoon. Seeking some kind of respite I took him. We played catch for about ten minutes and then it started to rain. No one else showed up and we went home. We had made an attempt at the comfort of routine but failed. That's okay... there would be other days for blue skies and baseball.

Despair. Nicholas had a two schoolmates who lost fathers that morning. A teacher who lost her brother. Gloom. More rain. This is real and tomorrow morning it will still be real.

Made him love death. Saw what that did to him. A bitter soldier with no war to fight... so he created one. Really, in the end, just a foolish coward. Loser. Maybe there is a place in this life for suicide?

We humans are always trying to find ways to turn the tide, flip it, make something bad into something good. It's part of our survival instinct. To feel the pain of hate if we must and then try to understand it's source and create a flag of hope from any of it that appears salvageable. So I thought about writing some songs about the bombing of the Alfred T. Murrah building and did so, about 6 or 7, most of them complete with the music stamped inside my head. Not very good I'll admit but the process helped me feel better. After ten years it's all still there.

And I do mean all of it.

Below I offer one verse from my own personal healing tonic... my very own little flag of hope.

Angels' descension

Unseen by the eyes of man,

Man's pretension

To believe that he can understand.

A decade later, the horror of 9-11 included, and I guess I still don't understand. But I believe that's okay... for now.