‘We Will Never Be the Same’ : The physical reminders of the Oklahoma City bombing have been buried. But for many of those who were left behind, the horror is only beginning.

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building is no more.

Connie Chung, Oprah Winfrey and most of the rest of the national media have packed up and moved on. The main suspect in the April 19 bombing that killed 168 people and shattered the spirit of this heartland city sits hidden behind bars and stone-faced.

Demolition crews continue to clear away the wreckage, and Oklahoma City continues to try to move from the shock of the explosion to the task of rebuilding.

Friends of survivors are telling them--sometimes impatiently and with a hint of unintentional patronizing--that the time for grieving and feeling sad is over. It’s been more than two months. Time to get on with the task of everyday living, to make everything all right again.

But for many of those directly affected by the blast, getting back to normal is as alien a concept as the rage behind the anti-government mission that led to the killings and the 500 injuries. The physical reminders of the bomb may have been buried, but for many of those left behind, the horror is only beginning.

These survivors are doing their best to be brave in the face of the never-ending nightmares and tears. They have been buoyed by the support and kindness of the American Red Cross, as well as by friends and strangers from around the world. They are not allowing themselves to be consumed with anger toward the perpetrators of the bombing. Besides, the world won’t stop long enough for them to focus on those emotions.

Still, as the aunt of Daina Bradley, the most well-known of the victims, said, “There’s a void in our life now. And we will never be the same again.” What follows are three stories of survival.

Karen Jones

It was a long June day for Karen Jones, filling out forms, talking to counselors at the American Red Cross disaster relief center set up in a shopping mall storefront.

Although she was weary, the friendly, curly-haired resident of Yukon, a suburb of Oklahoma City, endured all the procedures patiently, as if she is used to the slow movement of progress. In the weeks since her husband’s death, she has learned that nothing comes easily.

Friends have asked her what she would say to her husband, a Transportation Department computer analyst at the federal building, if she could see him once more for five minutes.

“They think that I would want to tell him that I loved him, but that’s not what I would say,” Jones said. “He already knew that. We would have celebrated our 20th anniversary in August. After all the years we spent together, that’s one thing that he always knew.

“But I would ask him how I am supposed to do all these things that I have to do now. I’m having to make some of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life. Larry would handle everything. I never paid the bills, made the decisions alone about the kids’ education, paid for the car insurance. I can’t believe all of the money all of this takes, and it’s so scary.”

Although her words conveyed fear and grief, her voice remained steady, unchoked by tears or emotion.

“I mean, we are 40 and 46. We never talked about death and funeral arrangements. We talked about trips we wanted to take. If I were to give advice to any couple, I would tell them to take five or 10 minutes to talk about what to do if something should happen to the other person. It’s a horrible thing to talk about, but you really need to touch base on what they would like, what arrangement would please them.

“And never, ever leave home without kissing your spouse goodby and saying, ‘I love you.”’

Larry and Karen Jones didn’t say goodby the morning of April 19. They had overslept and were in a rush to get ready for work. When Larry Jones went out the door, he just had time to say to his wife: “See you later.”

Soon afterward, Karen Jones got a page from a friend telling her that her 18-year-old son, Kelly, was looking for her. There had been a bombing at the building where Larry Jones worked.

“Kelly saw the television and saw where his father’s office was,” Jones recalled. “He said he knew his father was gone.”

It was seven days before Larry Jones’ body was recovered.

“During those days, there were times when I knew he wasn’t coming home, then I would think about him laying there in the building, possibly just hurt,” Jones said. “I didn’t get much sleep during those days. I slept on the couch. I didn’t want to go into our bedroom.”

These days, Jones still does not sleep very well: “I feel lonely and sad. Sometimes angry that he’s not here. He promised me he would always be there.”

Jones said she has tried to keep her mind off her sadness by staying busy with her job as an elder care nurse and with her home life. She returned to work on a shortened schedule about four weeks ago.

“But no matter how involved I get, the least little thing can start me crying and feeling depressed,” she said.

Not saying goodby to her husband is one of the things that most haunts Jones. “If I could change anything, I would change that,” she said. “That’s the hardest thing to live with.”

She added that her 10-year-old daughter, Jayme, cries a lot at night for her father. “She asks me, ‘Why did it have to be Daddy?’ ” Kelly “doesn’t talk about it all that much.” The oldest son, 22-year-old Michael, is in counseling.

Jones said she does not feel bitter toward principal suspect Timothy McVeigh or others implicated in the bombing. “I don’t think about those people. You could get real obsessive about that, and that will not bring Larry back.”

Hearing about the losses of others has helped Jones keep her own situation in perspective.

“There were people who lost children, who never got a chance to know them or see them grow up,” she said. “At least I had almost 20 years with Larry.”

Jones’ straightforwardness about her situation at times makes friends wonder how she can be so brave.

“They just catch me on good days,” she said, smiling slightly. “But I’m really not that strong. I cry in the shower, at night.”

But most of all, Jones said she stays strong because of and for her children. “The children are a source of my strength. And I have to be strong for them.”

Stella Strauss

Speaking in a voice barely above a whisper, Stella Strauss put her identification card on a table in front of her. “This is who I am,” she said. “This is who I used to be.”

The picture on the card identifying Strauss as a senior personnel officer for the Oklahoma Water Resources Board shows a smiling woman with fashionably short, styled black hair and light brown skin.

Her hair is a little longer and curlier now, and the smile is not so much in evidence. Friends tell her that she has grown much quieter since the explosion, which did extensive damage to the next-door state building where she worked. Doctors and therapists have told her she may be experiencing a delayed emotional reaction to the explosion.

Strauss lost part of herself in the blast. Doctors say she sustained some memory loss because of a blow to the back of her head from a glass brick flying from an exploding wall. When she returned to her job, paperwork and other tasks that she had done routinely for 24 years were suddenly foreign. She is on administrative leave.

The memory of the events of April 19 are all too vivid to the 49-year-old Strauss: “I have nightmares about it. I can still smell the bomb. I can still taste the bomb. It was a violent rape of all our senses.”

If she had followed her regular 9 a.m. routine of grabbing a cigarette outside the state building, Strauss said she most likely would have been killed. Instead, she decided to stay at her desk and work on a presentation for her new boss.

“The minute I sat down, the walls, the ceiling, the hallways, the doors, everything that defined our building, exploded,” Strauss recalled. “The force put my neck into a U-shape, and my head hit on the desk.”

Greatly shaken but feeling no pain, Strauss started looking to rescue her injured co-workers: “It was just a gut reaction. My dad always told me to do the right thing--be brave. Everyone was helping out.”

But it wasn’t long before she learned that two beloved co-workers did not survive the explosion--Bob Chipman, a financial analyst trainee, and Trudy Rigney, a draftsperson. The department became the only state agency to lose people in the blast.

“It hurts so much not to have them anymore,” she said. “To me, they are the real heroes. I lived a full life, and I would have gladly given my life for theirs. Something like this should not happen in America.”

She added: “It bothers me that everyone always talks about the federal building, but people don’t realize that there were other government agencies on the state and local level that were hurt.”

To better handle what’s happened to their co-workers, the surviving state employees get together just to talk, Strauss said. “We don’t really talk about what happened,” she said. “We ask each other how they’re doing, how their hearing is, things like that. I remember when we used to be able to laugh and joke. We don’t do that now.”

Strauss has her own individual struggles in dealing with the tragedy: “There are a lot of times when I sit on my balcony and I see the sun go down and the sun come up. I have nightmares. I saw things on the ground there I wished I had never seen.”

One source of consolation is an 8-year-old grandson who lives with her. Strauss said the boy has become more attached and protective of her since the explosion, sensing his grandmother’s pain. “He sleeps with me more,” she said. “He doesn’t like to lose sight of me.”

Strauss is determined to overcome her trauma and return to work: “I don’t want to go out like this. My aim is to retire with my head held high, not on disability. That is my goal.”

The Family of Daina Bradley

It looked like Christmas in June at the home of Mary Hill, the grandmother of Daina Bradley, 20, the young woman whose leg had to be amputated to free her from the rubble.

Boxes containing televisions, videotape recorders and other gifts that had been donated by friends and strangers sat unopened in her living room.

Recently, Oklahoma City Police Officer Willard Paige came to the door, bearing a $2,000 check from a California church. Hill and one of her daughters, Victoria Slaughter, hugged the lawman.

A lot of positives have come through Bradley’s and Hill’s door along with the tragedy that struck the family.

“It’s been a roller coaster,” said Hill, sitting in the living room of her home in Northeast, a predominantly African American community of Oklahoma City. “Either we’ve come through a shock period, or the shock is still to come. There are so many demands on us to take care of the two girls.”

Daina Bradley has not let the loss of her leg keep her from getting on with her life. “She moves very well on her new prosthetic leg,” said Slaughter, Bradley’s aunt. “She doesn’t let it slow her down at all. She likes to go. Sometimes she wears her leg, sometimes she doesn’t. If she’s around the house and gets tired of wearing it, she’ll take it off and put it over in the corner.”

Bradley had been inside the federal building with her mother, Cheryl Hammonds; Bradley’s 3-year-old daughter, Peachlyn; her 4-month old son, Gabreon, and her 23-year-old sister, Falesha Bradley, getting a social security card for Gabreon, when the bomb exploded.

Hammonds and the two children were killed. The attention surrounding Daina overshadowed Falesha’s extensive injuries--a right arm broken in two places, a right ear that was blown off, a fractured leg and brain trauma.

Falesha was released from the hospital two weeks ago, and is in “high spirits” as she continues her rehabilitation, Hill said.

“Since this happened, we’ve all gotten closer to God,” Slaughter said. “This was an eye-opener. It makes us appreciate each other more. And we understand that this was not God’s work.”

Hill said sometimes the family imagines that they’ll see Peachlyn “coming through the door again with her old happy self. It’s hard. But we’re determined to take care of each other.”