Saturday Photo Hunt – Memory

This week’s theme is Memory.  I went through a few different ideas before choosing a photo.  Good memory, bad memory, scary memory, funny memory…

I ended up going with a memory that gives me all of those feelings.

My wedding day.  The day I literally married my best friend and the love of my life all rolled into one.

May 12, 2000, four days after my birthday and one day before the city exploded.

We were 24 years old at the time, 6.5 years ago.   We got married in the city he was born and the first city I stayed in after moving here.  A city called Enschede near the German border.

He wore a tie of my island’s tartan.  A nice way of bringing a little bit of my home to our wedding as well.   The photo was taken at a water mill in Germany.   I chose this photo because of the way I’m looking at him in it.  Smiling at him and thinking how much I love him and how happy I am to be his wife.   I hope to look at him like that for my entire life.

It was a small wedding, as neither of us wanted anything too big or crazy.  There was about 20 of our close family and friends.

My wedding is a wonderful memory and a very happy one.

There are other things surrounding it that are not so happy though.  As I mentioned earlier it was one day before a major explosion in Enschede that year.  Here’s a video someone caught who was nearby:

Wikipedia describes the explosion:

The fire led to an enormous explosion that left 23 people dead (including four firemen) and 947 injured.  The biggest blast was heard as far as 60 kilometers from the scene. About 2000 homes were damaged or destroyed, leaving 1250 people homeless. The extent of the damage was estimated at half a billion euros.

The fire started in the work area of the central warehouse where some 900 kg of fireworks were stored. The fire extended to two full containers that had been placed illegally outside of the building. Since the fire department could not contain the fire initially, it was able to spread to a third container, which exploded shortly afterwards. A chain reaction of explosions eventually led to the ignition of the firework bunker. An estimated 177 tons of fireworks exploded, virtually destroying the surrounding residential area.

At the time of the video, we were 2km away showing my parents where my husband went to university.   It was a beautifully sunny day for that time of year, it was May 13 and we were already wearing shorts.    We’d just come out of the little grocery store on campus when we heard thunder.   It seemed totally out of place because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

After a while it became a constant rumbling that seemed to go on for ages, and then the explosion happened.   It was the loudest bang I’ve ever heard, the windows around us exploded, the thick metal doors on the gym nearby were bending in and out, barely able to hold on.   It was so loud you couldn’t tell if it was just around the corner or 5 km’s away.

I managed to get a few photos before we got in the car to get out of there:

I consider the explosion to be the most frightening memories of my life.

It’s also a sad memory.  The man who was videotaping our wedding was killed that day.   Marcel van Nieuwenhoven was a freelance cameraman and he was in Enschede filming a report on the explosion.  He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For months we had no idea and were wondering if we were ever going to get the tape of our wedding.   It wasn’t until almost a year later that we got a phone call from a man telling us that he was the Marcel’s father.  He had been clearing out his son’s things and found the tape of our wedding, but had no idea who we were.   He recognized the place we were married and had the date on the video so he called and tracked us down.   He told us what happened to his son and mailed us the video.

So that is my choice for this week’s photo theme.  The weekend of my wedding which has a variety of different memories attached to it… good and bad.

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