How We Remember

Who Sits Here? The 168 chairs at the Oklahoma City Memorial, each individually dipped in bronze, commemorate the dead and inspire the living

STEVE LISS FOR TIME

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LEE STONE/CORBIS SYGMA FOR TIME STREET MEMORIES: A Brooklyn mural honors a neighbor

Lovers walk together in silence. Most everyone is silent. Two huge-bellied men walk by in shorts and running shoes. An older woman with a modern metal cane walks by; then four tall, deacon-looking men in dark suits and ties. Many people are alone, like me. A father pushes his infant daughter past me in a stroller. She looks up and puts a finger to her lip to signify that one should be quiet. I give her back the signal. We smile in a shared secret.

Now the sky goes violet. Most of the other visitors have gone. The bases of the chairs rise slowly to a glow, like votive candles. They look more like a jury than they did in daylight. More questions presented by the chairs: What uses does one make of the past when it comes to the exercise of evil? How confident can one be when saying, "Never again"? Is it ever possible to relieve the terrible gaping absence that death creates?

I had asked Jeanine why she quit her job at the air base. She said, "After Karen died, I couldn't function. I couldn't handle big things. I lost my concentration. In a way, I dreaded seeing the memorial. Yet when it opened, it took me by total surprise. I never thought that I could be happy again. Then I walked in, and suddenly I felt good."