We stood in the valley and watched the dew turn to steam in the morning sun. We never thought you would disappear like the mist drifting all around us. You were our parents, our wives, our husbands, our kids, our broken limbs on the family tree. The rings of life said you had many more years ahead of you. However, misguided men took you.
You will always be at our side. We should not shed tears, but the pain was so acute. We did not say we love you. Some of you gave your lives so that your family members and strangers might live — heroes in a fleeting moment of courage. Our faith tells us that God does not make mistakes. You have another purpose beyond the reach of man. We will remember who you were, and you will live forever. There is no darkness where you are. Angels surround you, and they wipe the pain from your skin and give you wings. Our Heavenly Father received you and guided you through Heaven’s gates. Some of us saw a rainbow that appeared as the gates brushed against the moisture in the clouds. We know you are free of the struggles on earth, and in time, our pain may ease, but it will never fade completely. The comfort we find will come in remembering how you lived. For those who survived those horrible events, may God bless each of you. I pray that in time, your dreams are of quiet moments where you take back your lives — written in a moment of silence.

• Andre Anchondo, 23
• Jordan Anchondo, 24
• Arturo Benavides, 60
• Leonardo Campos, 41
• Angie Englisbee, 86
• Maria Flores, 77
• Raul Flores, 83
• Guillermo “Memo” Garcia, 36
• Jorge Calvillo García, 61
• Adolfo Cerros Hernández, 68
• Alexander Gerhard Hoffman, 66
• David Johnson, 63
• Luis Alfonzo Juarez, 90
• Maria Eugenia Legarreta Rothe, 58
• Maribel (Campos) Loya, 56
• Ivan Filiberto Manzano, 46
• Elsa Mendoza Marquez, 57
• Gloria Irma Márquez, 61
• Margie Reckard, 63
• Sara Esther Regalado Moriel, 66
• Javier Rodriguez, 15
• Teresa Sanchez, 82
• Juan Velazquez, 77