I’ve spent the last 4 months trying to avoid the intersection of Shady and Wilkins, because just seeing the Tree of Life always gave me a gut punch. This has been difficult since it’s just 3 blocks from my mom’s house, and not much farther from my weekly Shadowrun campaign. So earlier this week, I decided I need to confront my feelings on this head on. I was going to be in Squirrel Hill today anyway, so I decided to go to the intersection and let it hit me hard, so that I can finally start to work it out for myself.
I found I’m not really ready to deal with this in words. This event has also given me an internal chain reaction of emotional turmoil; bringing up the ghosts of all of the horror I’ve seen this community go through. And I mean real life actual horror, some of which is still playing out today… as is evidenced by what happened here. So, I started taking pictures. I present these to you now.
Please forgive any tear smudges that may have hit the lens.
