Tuesday, April 19, 2005 | by nathan

“You Just Never Stop Feeling It.”

I didn’t feel well today so I skipped my night class. Mom didn’t feel well either so we made cajun soup and smoothies with strawberries and lime yogurt. They were delicious.

We sat down to watch television; Aaron Brown is doing a look back at the Oklahoma City bombing, because tomorrow is the 10-year anniversary.

I was in the 9th grade that day; I was fourteen. I remember that they came over the intercom and said that anyone whose parents worked in downtown had to come to the office. This was strange but I thought little of it until they came over the intercom to tell us what had happened: “There has been an explosion downtown.”

We spent the whole rest of the day in shock. We were in junior high; some kids were making tacky jokes. I found these appalling. I still find it appalling when people mock this event in history. My freshman year I told someone I was from Oklahoma, and his response was, “What do you guys have there, nothing but Ryder trucks and fertilizer, right?” I said nothing; I walked away.

I go down to the bombing memorial about once a year. Sometimes I go to St. Paul’s Episcopal church right across the street from the memorial. The other night I parked there when I went to go mail my taxes.

Today was a really difficult day; lots of little challenges, physical ones, emotional ones, spiritual ones. I drove home listening to KC Clifford and Mary Chapin Carpenter and felt like I really wanted to cry, but I didn’t.

I started watching this retrospective on the bombing, and I cried bitterly. I’ve been crying for an hour - you just never stop feeling it. I didn’t have anyone I knew really well who was in it, but it was terrifying, and sad, and numbing. Mom said, “That was just so unbearable.”

“But here we are, ten years later. We bore it,” I said.

We bore it. We still bear it. I can’t believe I drive past that place at least once a week. I don’t understand how human beings live with the things we live with. I don’t know how people bear the loss of a parent, or a child, when I spent half my day freaking out because I lost my KEYS. My fucking KEYS. That experience sapped me emotionally and caused my ulcer to act up; and that was the first of a series of events…

And here are these people, and they’ve been through this literal kind of hell, and I just don’t understand how we deal.

Ten years later, and it’s hitting me fresh again.

There’s that old song that says, “There are holes, holes, holes in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” I think about that now, about how wounds don’t heal, but they stitch back together imperfectly, with holes between. I went through a window, and my head has a long, thick scar, and I can’t feel a good third of my scalp. I can’t forget that, either. And I don’t know how I lived through that; and here that was easy compared to what these people in the Murrah building went through.

Tomorrow there will be 168 seconds of silence. I think I’ll go down to the Memorial and see Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter speak.

Time keeps passing, and we are helpless to keep up in its sweep. And our hearts don’t get totally better, ever.