The Healing Fields

THE HEALING FIELDS (Tempe Town Lake)

I thought I had prepared myself for an emotional experience

But I was not prepared!

As you walk through the entrance, this is the view you see.
You can see the flags in a distant. Waving and greeting you.

As I got closer I wondered, what do I imagine 3000 people to look like?
It's certainly not a massive number like 75,000 that go to a football game.
Its not the massive number of 500,000 people who went to Woodstock.
But when you are standing amongst the 3,000 flags that represent the 3,000 innocent people who lost their lives, it seems a large number indeed.!

As I walked and read about each person's life that was taken that day, I realized some were as young as 25, many around age 35 and a few older up to age 50. [oh.so.young.....] I came across three in particular. John-a young man who had just become a father 6 months prior, Jodi -a single woman who was raising her 13 year old daughter alone [what has happened to her daughter], and Richard- the Sr. Vice President of risk management- did he know of the risks of working at the twin towers?

No longer did there seem like a number of 3,000-
but instead individuals with families and lives of their own!

Then all of sudden, I heard the saddest song I've ever heard. It was a lone man, standing next to his nephew's flag, playing taps on his bugle. I couldn't fight back the tears. And when he was all done, he said he cries every time, every day, and every year he plays by his nephew's flag.
{Candice, you would have been proud of me}
I made my way up and around to the Mill Avenue bridge
to capture the entire somber essence of the flags.

As I was leaving,
I turned around and captured an jetliner flying overhead......
wonder where it is going to land?............When it comes to my country and those who fight for it or
those who lost their lives for it

I am forever grateful!