I really don't know how to articulate how helpless and awful I feel about what happened today at the marathon. Just yesterday I threw a family party at my house for my 57 year old cousin who made this the year to fulfill her dream of running the Boston Marathon.
There is my cousin on the right in the blue jacket, her husband to her left. If you can see, taped to the mantle in the background is a map of the marathon route. And there were many words of encouragement, congratulatory and exhortatory balloons and a cake. And I even had a bouncy house.
All was well with the world.
And then this cowardly and horrific act causes incomprehensible harm to so many - as of this writing, there are 2 dead and 98 injured, with that number having steadily risen since first counts at around 4 pm local time. Note that they were low trajectory explosions, so the news is reporting that the area hospitals are performing many leg amputations. Awful. And in the process, it marred one of the best days of the year in this wonderful city. But Barack got it right:
President Obama: "Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people."
— The White House (@whitehouse) April 15, 2013
And so is my cousin. Thanks to two mid-route stops for family pictures and the grace of God, my cousin was just at the edge of the second explosion radius and suffered only a shrapnel wound to her right leg.
So dear cousin, we are eternally grateful that we messed up your time and you did not finish that last .1 mile. Our thoughts are with the 100+ families who have lost or are caring for those more seriously wounded. Sad day in Boston, but there are reports that many runners ran past the finish line and straight to Mass General Hospital to donate blood. So to the coward(s) that orchestrated this, be warned that we are resilient and you did nothing but bind us together more fervently.
4/17/13 UPDATE: My cousin is having the shrapnel extracted today. I guess since then, there has been substantial bruising and swelling throughout her entire quad and the back of her knee. But she is walking and will recover, so all is well. I wanted to pass along two additional notes. First she is eternally grateful to the middle aged woman who put her arm around her, gave her a cell phone so she could call her husband, and gently and calmly walked her to the medical tent. And perhaps her greatest act of kindness was shielding my cousin's eyes as they walked toward the back of the tent. Of course she cannot (nor can we) be shielded from the horror of what unfolded, but that wonderful stranger did the best she could to minimize it. Finally, below is an email from my cousin attaching a picture from HuffPost of another good samaritan who initially approached her to make sure she was OK. HE asked HER if she was OK. Ummm...dude, are you OK? People are good. Period.
Attached is a photo from the Huffington Post of the man who asked me: "Am I okay?" after the bombing. Thanks for everything. Talk to you soon.Love,
I understand there was a problem with the .jpeg, so the link to the picture is here.
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