About last week…

It’s hard to even know where to begin. And I apologize in advance for this long, rambly post — it’s one of those where I’m kind of just getting it all down, not editing or culling much along the way. But so it goes.

So I’ll begin with last Sunday. Clio was still inpatient at that point. We were going on a week of hospitalization, for what was basically a common cold. But it was a cold that happened to come when her immune system was particularly weak after an intense round of chemo. So while Clio felt basically fine by last Sunday, we still had to wait for her ANC (Absolute Neutrophil Count) to recover. Which was taking a frustratingly long time.

And as a result of all of this, we couldn’t go as a family to the big, annual pasta party celebration for the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge on Sunday afternoon. This is when hundreds of people running the Boston Marathon for Dana Farber / cancer research, as well as many of the individuals (many of them kids, like Clio) in whose honor they’re running, all get together to celebrate and get inspired and ready for the big day.

Our revised plan was that Elsa and I would go. But then Elsa got a bad cold and was in no shape to come (and be around cancer patients) so she stayed home with a sitter, and it was just me.

It was nice to be out of the hospital, and the mood was festive as I walked down (now world-famous) Boylston Street toward the hotel. There were people everywhere in blue and yellow Marathon jackets, as well as a number of tourists, and crews were finishing assembling the medical tents in Copley Square and the barriers along the sidewalks. There was a definite police presence, and the thought actually occurred to me that this was the sort of event that could easily be a target for terrorism. It’s the kind of thought I frequently have in crowded public places — ever since 9/11, that is. But the thought flitted away as I continued toward the hotel.

As I got there, though, my good mood faded. The hotel was a bustle of activity — runners and their families everywhere — and as I rode the escalators to the fourth floor, I felt more and more disappointed and upset and angry that I was at this event alone, instead of with our whole family. And when I saw all the homemade posters of the Jimmy Fund kids being honored — including the one of Clio we’d all decorated together — lining the hallways, I found myself in tears.

I collected myself, got a glass of wine and headed into the ballroom. I couldn’t believe the sheer number of people. There was a big stage, giant screens. This was a huge event — much bigger than I’d expected. I found my way to our assigned table, and seated there was not only Katelin, but her best friend, her boyfriend, her brother and her parents, who’d come up from Connecticut — plus the four empty seats meant for our family. And I lost it.

All the stress of the previous week with Clio in the hospital — the back and forth, the exhaustion, the disruption for Elsa — had caught up with me, and I was just heartbroken that our family was missing this event we’d looked forward to for so long, thanks to cancer of all things — the very thing everyone here was dedicated to eradicating. Moreover, I felt like we’d let Katelin and her family down. We all should have been there to wish her well.

Katelin and her family were lovely, and comforting, and I managed to have an OK time. Except when they played a video with a photo montage of children who had died of cancer. I don’t know if they were kids in whose honor people were running, or children from the Jimmy Fund Clinic who’d died over the past year, or what, but I had to look away after a few smiling faces. (And during that video, I was actually really glad Clio and Elsa weren’t with me. I wondered what all the other parents of patients in the dining room were thinking…)

As I walked back to my car — crossing Boylston at Dartmouth street, a half block from where the first bomb would explode the next day — I felt that much more determined that our entire family be at the marathon to cheer for Katelin.

And so we were: I came with Elsa from home, and Alastair, who’d spent the night at the hospital, came with Clio, and we met at the cheering section for the Jimmy Fund Families, at Mile 25, just outside Kenmore Square. At just before 2:45, Katelin ran past us — stopping for quick hugs and a picture. “Just one more mile!” we said. “You can do it!!”

We didn’t stick around too long after that. Just before we left, I noticed about eight police offers running past, which struck me as odd; but I commented that maybe they were trying to crack down on “rogue” runners jumping in to cross the finish line. A lot of people (most of them drunk college kids) jump in toward the end. In retrospect, my comment didn’t really make sense, because why would they crack down at that point as opposed to any other point in the race? Especially since all of the wheelchair, elite and high-ranking runners had already finished?

It was right at 3:00, just as I was getting Clio into the car to head back to the hospital (Alastair and Elsa had already left) that the woman in the next car over, also heading out, asked if I’d heard the news: there had been some explosions at the finish line.

“Was it a gas line or something?” I asked. She said she didn’t know, but she’d heard that some people had gotten hurt. “Hear all the sirens?” she said. I did, now that she mentioned it. And I looked up and saw that there was a helicopter hovering not too far away.

I turned on the radio as we started back toward the hospital, but they weren’t reporting anything yet. Then I turned the radio off, because I didn’t want Clio to hear something and get scared, but she’d heard me talking with the woman in the parking lot, and caught the word “explosions.” “Did people die?” she asked. I told her I didn’t know; I hoped not.

There was a Sox game getting out right right as we were leaving, and the traffic was backed up. We ended up sitting for a while at the major intersection just before the hospital area (Children’s, Beth Israel and Brighham and Women’s Hospital are all adjacent). I watched at least five ambulances barrel by in fast succession. And I knew that this was bad.

I tried calling Alastair, but there was no signal, so I just texted, “Turn on the radio.” Then I texted Katelin and asked if she was OK, because my God, she would have been right at the finish line, or close to it. I texted my mom and one of my best friends with the words “We’re OK,” in case they’d heard, and were worried.

And I held back my tears — because I had to. But inside I felt like I was about to collapse. More murder? More misery? One more act of senseless violence I had to try to explain to my children and shield them from at the same time? And all those Dana Farber runners, and other runners for charity, who’d trained so hard, and raised so much money. And Katelin: what if she’d gotten hurt or worse? How could we ever explain that to the girls?

I felt weak as Clio and I walked back to the hospital and up to her room. My heart hurt. I was desperate to know what was going on. But when you’ve got children, especially very young ones, you can’t get completely derailed and distracted by what’s happening in the wider world. You have to stay present and focused, as best you can, on your child’s needs.

Clio needed a bath. So that’s what we did. She played in the tub, making me “ice cream” with bath water and paper cups. In between ice cream courses, I checked my phone for replies to my texts. I tried to get on Facebook and Twitter to get a sense of what was happening, but neither would load. I tried to call Alastair again. No luck.

Once Clio’s bath was done and we’d gotten settled back into our room (“Thank goodness you two are back,” our nurse said, “we were so worried”) and had her hooked back up to fluids, I got onto Facebook and posted that we were OK, but that we were still waiting to find out about Katelin. So many people — including many of you — were worried, knowing she was running for us.

I started reading the news online. I listened to the sirens outside. I learned from our nurse that there were injured kids coming into the ER. A couple of hours later, finally, I heard via Facebook that Katelin was OK — half a mile from the finish when it happened — and her family, who was just 100 yards away from the explosions, was fine too.

And then something strange happened: I went numb. I continued to follow the news online, between meds given, snacks prepared, and trips to the bathroom for Clio. But I felt strangely detached and removed from the whole thing. Which was particularly strange given that we were right in the middle of it all — victims one floor above us in the ICU, other patients in the surrounding hospitals, armed guards downstairs at the entrances.

The feeling of numbness persisted over the next 48 hours, even as I learned in more detail what had happened. Even as I learned that an eight-year-old boy was one of the victims. Even when I brought muffins and scones upstairs to the ICU the next morning for the doctors, nurses and staff, and saw — I’m almost positive — the parents of some child that must have been a patient. (Why else would a mother be wearing scrubs unless she’d ended up there unexpectedly? And the look of dazed shock on her face, and her husband’s….) I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel sick inside.

And this kind of emotional detachment isn’t like me. I was aware of the oddness of it even as it was happening. In fact, I talked about it with our social worker, who stopped by the next day. All I can guess is that being in the disorienting bubble of our hospital room and routine, with no opportunity to be “off-duty” or even in a different physical space from Clio, I didn’t have the time or emotional wherewithal to process any of it.

It was different for Alastair, who was home, and could let his guard down and watch TV after Elsa went to bed. He was frustrated, I think, by my apparent detachment. I was frustrated too, on some level, not to be feeling it all more deeply, and worried that the stress of it would wallop me later. I felt guilty. And on the other hand, I felt grateful not to be falling apart when I couldn’t afford to.

When I went home on Wednesday night, though, after my double-night shift at the hospital, I began to feel the whole thing more keenly. And the sadness and anger has settled in. For something so awful to happen on a stretch of road I know so well, and have walked so often, in the city I’ve called my home for more than fifteen years. The victims could so easily have been us, or people we knew. And the destruction was so random, so intrusive, so horrific.

And then the manhunt (as it’s being called) on Friday – a whole other level of strangeness. I’d actually been planning to take Elsa to the Stride Rite outlet mall in Watertown (that Watertown) to buy shoes on Friday morning. I literally haven’t been to that mall since I took the girls there to buy shoes (“shizz”) when they were toddlers — an incident I write about in Double Time.

Instead, we spent the day at home. Clio’s clinic appointment was cancelled due to Boston being on lockdown, and many area businesses were closed. We were nervous even about going down the street to the playground. Which, in retrospect, seems kind of paranoid. But two miles from us they were detonating “suspicious objects.” The danger and unpredictability of the whole situation was really unnerving. For all anyone knew, these guys were just one part of some larger terrorist plot.

Obviously, thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

It’s a relief to have some sense of closure after last week. It’s a relief for our whole family to be back home under one roof. It’s heartening to see our city rallying in support of the victims of this tragedy. And it’s reassuring to know — and important to remind ourselves — that goodness in the world outstrips violence and evil by factors of millions. It’s something I’ve been reminding the girls repeatedly over the past week. And trying to remind myself.

 

“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” –Anne Frank