Piece #7 - Tragedy and 2009 [Part 1]

This by far, will be the most difficult one to discuss. Psychiatrists always try to advice people that have been through a horrible ordeal to clinging to their religion as a way of seeking comfort. As for myself, my religion is Christianity. Please don't think that I'm suddenly going to turn into Billy Graham and start preaching until the tent comes down. I just want you to understand where I'm coming from when I talk about all the tragedies I've had to face so far in my life with having Asperger’s. Just as an overview ONLY, because the way you believe is your own business and not for me to say right or wrong; Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He came, was crucified and God resurrected Him from the dead. The idea is that if we believe in our heart that we are sinners and that God really did raise Jesus from the dead then we will be saved through Him (And be forgiven). [Romans 10:9] So when we die, we'll be with Jesus in heaven for eternity. In another Piece later on, I'll mention why that is important with my autism.

With that being said, the first major thing that happened to me and my wife was miscarriages. After we had our first two children Megan and Alicia, Jaimee and I wanted to have at least one more child. When my wife had gotten pregnant things seemed to go along well, but no sooner than we had found out she was pregnant...we had lost the baby in a miscarriage. That was tough and hard to understand because we had never had a hard time with a pregnancy. But, we tried again only to end up with the same result...not only did it happen a second time, but a third one as well. Doctors were finally able to determine that when Jaimee was pregnant, her hormone level would drop thus terminating the pregnancy. We believe the reason was that for a short time, Jaimee had a special birth control put inside her arm called Norplant. Even though she had them removed, the medicine was still working in her body. So when Jaimee got pregnant again, she had to have hormone shots to keep her level up and today, that's when we have the twins!

The next event was definitely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was Easter weekend in 1995; Jaimee, myself and the girls (Megan/Alicia...the twins were still inside Jaimee.) decided to take a trip to Oklahoma for several reasons. The first one was because my family lived there and it gave us a chance to meet my grandma and aunt/uncle; the second one was due to a job interview I had lined up with the El Paso (TX) school district, where we would meet at a hotel in Edmond, OK. (Edmond is just a few minutes north of Oklahoma City.) On Easter Sunday, Megan and Alicia came down with chicken pox so that pretty much shut down church for us, at least when I would be done with the interview on Wednesday of that week we planned on visiting downtown Oklahoma City before we left. When my interview day rolled around, I left and headed up to Edmond while Jaimee stayed at the hotel and started packing up for the trip home. I arrived at the interview and everything seemed to go well, but a little after 9:00 am (CDT) we both heard a 'boom' sound; it was like one of those sounds when a large air condition was ready to kick on. The interviewer looked back then looked at me in bewilderment, but we went back to the discussion without much contemplation. I finished shortly after, thanked him, left the hotel in Edmond and started to drive back south toward Oklahoma City with no real indication that anything had happened...but I was mistaken, sorely mistaken. My first clue was a police car passing me going at a high rate of speed, and then an ambulance right after the police car had passed. Suddenly the radio station I had been listening to broke in and announced that there's been an explosion in downtown and…that was it. I was like 'what the heck?' so I immediately go rifling through different radio stations to get more information. As I am doing this, convoys of emergency vehicles are racing past me like it was the Indy 500. In many ways, I was feeling the same being anxious and nervous; I wanted to go racing back too...I think I might have been pulling a Speed Racer myself! I was finally able to get more information, and of all stations, it was NPR! They reported that a massive explosion happened near the federal building in Oklahoma City. In just a few minutes after the report, I was able to get my first glimpse of downtown and sure enough I witnessed a large column of smoke billowing out from the middle of town. As I exited to go back to my hotel, there was a TV news truck on the bridge that was over the highway. I entered the hotel lobby and every TV set was on, showing the scenes of the explosion from the TV truck I passed which was just sitting less than a block from our hotel!!! I entered the hotel room and Jaimee was relieved to see me. She told me when the explosion happened, she thought something inside the hotel blew up because it knocked over some pictures and the TV set in our room. We decided that the best thing to do was to leave and head home.

As we left, we drove by downtown via the highway and saw what had happened. The scene looked horrible with most of the building crumbed and several cars on fire. We had listened to the news as we passed the Alfred P. Murrah building; they stated that police were looking for a pickup truck driven by two Islamic looking men (figures!). Before we got too far out of town we noticed a Highway State patrolman turning around in the medium of the highway with a white guy in the back seat; while at the same time was passed his beat up car...and that fokes was TIMOTHY McVEIGH!!! The only reason I remembered that moment was because I thought it was odd that a State Patrolman was out here and not in the city. We stopped by a Hardees and as we entered, there stood (You guessed it!) two Islamic men...one was kind of short but, his friend was a massive guy with rolling muscles; right then and there I pray to God - please don't be the two guys the police were looking for because muscleman could've beat me into soda bottle! Jaimee wanted me to follow them outside to see what vehicle they were getting into, so I reluctantly followed the two men out, they got into a car and not a truck! I ran back in and reported to Jaimee what I saw; then my wonderful wife stated..."You know they could have ditched the truck for another car." (At that point, I didn't like her very much...because I really didn't want to confront the giant Islamic dude.) We both decided it would be best to leave it up to the police. (Phew!) As we drove home, Jaimee finally turned off the radio because all they kept talking about were the children that had been at the daycare center, in the building. When we got home, I had to rush Jaimee to the hospital because with all of the crazy stuff that happened on that day, Jaimee started to go into premature labor with the twins! Thankfully, they were able to stop the contractions. I did later call KMBC channel 9 [Kansas City TV station] and told them we were there during the blast, but they weren't interested! (That didn't make any sense!) We did finally go visit downtown a few years later, where all they had was a fence and a slab at the time, but to date, we haven't visited the official memorial to the 168 people that died on April 19, 1995. Here's link to the official website: http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org



The Song of Inspiration [Check it out on iTunes!]:

Song: "Healing Begins"

Artist: Tenth Avenue North

Album: The Light meets the Dark


Here's the video to the selected song:

This is a picture of Megan (left) and my cousin who are doing a little Easter egg hunting in my aunt and uncle's backyard. This was taken during the week of the Oklahoma disaster. My aunt and uncle lived in Edmond at the time.