On April 19 the Oklahoma City National Memorial will be dedicated on the site where, five years ago to the day, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was destroyed by a terrorist bomb. The families of those killed will be there, along with the survivors and their rescuers, as well as President Clinton, who is scheduled to attend, and thousands of Americans who wish simply to pay their respects. But the hope on such a sad anniversary is that the ceremony will provide some measure of uplift and a sense of renewal. The centerpiece of the memorial will be 168 bronze-and-granite glass-bottomed chairs, each bearing the engraved name of a victim. At night the glass base of the chairs, 19 of which are smaller than the others to represent the children who died, will be lit so that they appear to be floating. Of those who survived the bombing masterminded by Timothy McVeigh, who is currently on death row at the federal penitentiary outside Terre Haute, Ind., many continue to struggle with the physical and psychic wounds of that terrible day. But as a look at the lives of some of the people captured in the most memorable photographs of the tragedy suggests, the healing continues, inexorably if imperfectly.

An Eternal Bond

The photograph was perhaps the most wrenching of the terrible images to come out of Oklahoma City: firefighter Chris Fields tenderly cradling the lifeless body of 1-year-old Baylee Almon. To this day, Baylee has remained a presence in Fields's life, and he and his wife, Cheryl, have become good friends with Baylee's mother, Aren. "I never knew Baylee, but there was a kind of attachment," says Fields, 35. "It was like I was associated with her."

To be sure, each family has borne its own special burden. Fields acknowledges that he had a difficult time dealing with the demands of fame brought on by the photo. The constant requests for interviews took time away from his family, which now includes son Parker, 1, as well as 7-year-old Ryan, and seriously strained his marriage. Fortunately, as the media frenzy subsided, Chris and Cheryl, 32, managed to get their life back on track. "My wife and I worked hard to stay together, and the past three years have been the best of all," says Fields, who was promoted to major in 1996. As things stand now, he has no plans to be present when the national memorial is dedicated on April 19. "I'll report to work and watch the ceremony on TV," he says.

The road back for Aren, 27, who talks with Fields every few weeks, has been even harder. Yet there are signs of hope. Nine months after the bombing, Aren, who had been raising Baylee as a single mother (and who has not disclosed the identity of Baylee's father), met Stan Kok, an Air Force communications specialist. "I fell in love with Stan because he treated Baylee just as I do," she says. "From the start, he would bring little gifts for her and visit the grave with me." She and Kok, 29, were married in April 1997. They now have a daughter, Bell, 2, who bears a striking resemblance to her half sister Baylee, and are expecting another child in December.

Though until recently Aren could not bear to look at the picture of her dead child—"If I had my way, I'd take all the negatives and burn them," she says—she recently helped launch the Protecting People First Foundation, which will use a version of the photo as its official logo. The foundation was created to lobby for the use of shatterproof glass in public buildings as a precaution against man-made and natural disasters. "Using the picture this way turns it into something that symbolizes safety and not tragedy," she says. But her heart has never fully healed—and perhaps it will not. "I don't find closure," says Aren. "I never forget." In fact, she adds, "I talk to Baylee even today. She is as alive to me as she ever was. Several times a day I tell her I love her, and there is not a night that I don't tell her good night before I go to sleep."

With a Child, Hope Is Reborn

Edye Smith's anguish broke America's heart. Even now, five years later, few will have forgotten the sight of the grief-racked young mother with her ex-husband, Tony Smith, as they sat beside the single white casket containing the bodies of their two little boys, Chase, 3, and Colton, 2, laid together for eternity. "At that point we felt like we needed each other," says Smith, 28, of the man she had divorced four months before the bombing that claimed the lives of their sons. "I thought we'd be together a little longer and try to help each other through it."

What happened instead was that, hoping perhaps to replace the irreplaceable, the devastated couple decided to remarry and try to have more children together. But within a month of their September 1995 second wedding, paid for by the National Enquirer, the pair had parted again—without a pregnancy. Says Smith: "We were thinking with our hearts instead of our heads."

As disappointing as the second breakup was, worse lay ahead. In June 1996, Smith learned that her beloved stepfather, Glenn Wilburn, was critically ill with pancreatic cancer, which would claim him 13 months later at the age of 46. "I don't know which is worse—losing someone in an instant or watching them waste away," says Smith, who retired from the IRS after the bombing, citing the stress of the ordeal. She currently works as a hairdresser. "Sometimes it makes you wonder, 'Why is God doing this to me?' "

But then she found love again when she met satellite truck operator Paul Stowe, now 26, at the Oklahoma State Fair in September 1996. They married eight months later, and on Jan. 12, 1998, Edye gave birth to their son. Named Glenn after her stepfather, the chubby-cheeked towhead bears an uncanny resemblance to Colton. "When we took Chase and Colton's beds out of their room, I was crying and so sad," says Edye's mother, Kathy Wilburn. "But as we set up Glenn's bed that day, there was a new spirit of hope and joy."

Her Family Gone, Only the Pain Remains

Daina Bradley, who went to the Social Security office to change the name on her son's file, lost nearly everything in the blast at the Alfred T. Murrah Federal Building. Her two children, Peachlyn, 3, and 4-month-old Gabreon, were killed, as was her mother, Cheryl Hammonds, 44. She herself was rescued from the wreckage only after her right leg was amputated to free her.

The ensuing five years haven't helped. Though Bradley, 25, gave birth to Alize, now 4, a day shy of the bombing's first anniversary, her marriage to longtime boyfriend Gabriel Bruce in December 1995 ended bitterly soon after Alize was born.

Meanwhile, donations to aid her and her sister Falesha Joyner, 29—who suffered traumatic head injuries in the explosion—are gone, and Bradley feels she was exploited by friends and relatives. "This whole thing has been about money," she says. Daina, haunted by "hearing my family calling for help," now lives alone on disability and Social Security payments and depends heavily on Falesha and her husband, Darron. "If my sister wasn't there," says Daina, "me and my son wouldn't have nothing."

A Grandmother's Tireless Devotion

From a distance, P.J. Allen looks like any 6-year-old, happily coloring in his toy-filled playroom. But the loud whooshing that can be heard throughout the house he shares with his grandmother Deloris Watson serves as a reminder that this is far from the case. The sound is his breathing through the tracheotomy tube in his throat. It was inserted after the searing fire of the Oklahoma City blast—which P.J. was one of only six children at the America's Kids daycare center to survive—scarred his lungs so severely that he still needs treatments with a medicated mist every four hours. "We are a long ways from where the doctors would like him to be," says Watson, 48. "There is massive scar tissue."

The same might be said of Watson's life. Under the stress of P.J.'s medical problems, her marriage to salesman Willie Watson, now 48, collapsed, and the pair divorced in February 1999. Because of P.J.'s open trachea and the danger of respiratory infection, he cannot attend either school or daycare, and a teacher visits him at home two hours a day. "I am his playmate," says Watson, who lost her job as a technician with Southwestern Bell after the demands of her grandson's care kept her from returning to work. Although treatment for P.J.'s blast-related injuries is covered by the community-based bombing fund, other medical expenses, including his asthma treatment, are not, and Watson is scrambling to find a replacement for her job-related insurance, which expires May 1. "It hasn't been easy," says Watson, who relies on aid from several charities. "At this point we basically live at the mercy of others."

Still, Watson strives to remain upbeat, focusing on that long-awaited day, perhaps four years down the road, when P.J.'s trach tube will come out and he can finally go to school. "I have nothing to feel sorry for," she says. "No sacrifice is too much for this child."

Risen from the Ashes, Two Comeback Kids

Jim Denny can chuckle now as he recalls the day he took his battered 2-year-old daughter Rebecca home from the hospital two weeks after the bombing. "Where on that baby could I hug or kiss without causing pain?" he wondered. Now, as Rebecca and her brother Brandon, 8—who has had three life-threatening surgeries to remove a piece of wood that pierced his skull—romp across the family living room, it's easy to understand their father's relief.

For Denny, 55, and his wife, Claudia, 41, finding their children alive after the blast ripped through the Murrah Building daycare center seemed nearly miraculous, and the pair's recovery has been equally astonishing. Rebecca has only light scarring on her cheek and thigh. And Brandon, who had to relearn to speak because of the injury to his brain, walks with just a slight limp and talks like any other child his age. "I don't think you can find any more normal kids," says Claudia.

Both children are flourishing in first grade. "We are in the same room!" says Rebecca happily. "We are there all day!" Brandon, though he had a steel plate put in his head last year to replace missing bone, is able to play T-ball and soccer. "I play goalie!" he cries. Brandon continues to work with a speech pathologist, and there are occasional disturbing reminders of the bombing. During one thunderstorm, Rebecca told Claudia, now a secretary at Tinker Air Force Base, that she didn't want to go in "the bad building" again. Yet the Dennys are counting their blessings. Says Jim, who quit his job as a shop foreman to care for the kids and now gives motivational speeches: "With everybody healthy, every day is Christmas."