When I first saw this prompt, I didn’t know if I could bare to write about that day. It took an entire week to put all those thoughts spinning around inside my head into words that made any kind of sense.
I believed in God through some pretty gut-wrenching years where things unfolded that should have never seen the light of day. But I think this particular day proved to be my undoing when my mind couldn’t reconcile what was unfolding right in front of me.
I have a soft spot for children, animals, and seniors. I always have. And when something unimaginable happens to any one of them, it can send me into a tailspin even on a good day. I now realize this was one of those days.
It was a spring day that started out full of sunshine and promise, but ended in a way that would change my life as well as many others forever. I finished an errand shortly before 9:00 am on the 1st floor of this now infamous building. As I walked approximately a half a block east, that’s when it occurred. An explosion of such incredible magnitude that it rocked the ground in such a violent way that it knock me completely off my feet even from that distance away.
I think when something horrific happens in a completely unexpected way, you find yourself in a tug of war of feelings as you try to suspend the reality of what is actually happening to you in that moment by trying to bury it under anything that you can.
This is why I forgot about this day for 22 years, 4 months and 16 days before I began having dreams about it every single night back in the fall of 2017. I continued to dream about it until I finally realized that I wasn’t experiencing a new nightmare…I was remembering a tragic event.
This past year has been a time of discovery, as I’ve retraced parts of this nightmare and recovered memory trying to shine a light on it as I follow all those breadcrumbs back to that spring morning so many years ago. Back to that day when I got a scar along my left forearm that I couldn’t remember anything about. Back to that day when I gave an older woman my favourite denim shirt because she was bleeding and this is why I could never find it. Back to that day when I felt death surround me and could not handle the pure evil that had set certain events into motion all around me.
But unlike the past, when I couldn’t see anything but the evil around me, there was a good that emerged throughout that day as well. During the chaos that followed, people forgot about themselves and focused on others as they rallied around all those souls in need. And despite the way my mind eventually locked this day up inside a box and pushed it to the very back of my mind because I simply couldn’t handle the events from that day, I too reached out to a soul in need despite what I was struggling with during that horrific morning.
What I now see with full clarity is the good inside that morning, despite the evil that descended down upon the city that day. A good that far outweighed all the evil that set that tragic morning into motion so many years ago.
So as I continue to retrace my steps through the rubble of those past memories, attempting to piece things back together again, I remember to keep a sliver of sunshine inside my back pocket just in case I need to light my way along some unexpected dark corridor. Until I finally find the lost pieces to a forgotten puzzle that first began so many years ago.
~ KA ~ June 2, 2018 ~
~ Photograph by KA ~
