One year ago...

One year ago, in Beslan, Russia, some ninety 6 and 7 year old children laid out their best clothes and planned brightly colored bouquets of flowers to give to their teachers on the 6 and 7 year olds' very first day of first grade at School No 1.

Twenty-two first graders wouldn't come home again.

From a Washington Post article: One year later, the children are preparing to go back to school, many for the first time since the siege. Tamerlan and his classmates are at the heart of Beslan's struggle to endure. The first-graders are the most vulnerable group in this small city, psychologists said, because the only school day they know is the day they and their families became hostages.

"School means death for them," said Fatima Bagayeva, a psychologist at the local hospital who has been working with the youngest survivors. "They have no other memory of school."

Before it would end in a burst of fire and bullets on September 3rd, three hundred thirty-one would die in the siege.

One hundred eighty-six were children.

remember
verb
1. To renew an image or thought in the mind: bethink, mind, recall, recollect, reminisce, retain, revive, think.
2. To care enough to keep (someone) in mind: think about, think of.