A hidden history of heartbreak

This morning on my way to meet friends in Harvard Square, I stopped at Copley Square to visit the Boston Marathon finish line. Yesterday was One Boston Day–the anniversary of the 2013 Marathon bombing–and on Monday, I’ll watch this year’s race here in Newton, cheering the runners before they face Heartbreak Hill. Today, I wanted to visit the two spots on Boylston Street where three people died and hundreds were injured: a chance to pay my respects at a place simultaneously festive and somber.

There is no permanent memorial commemorating the Marathon bombing; instead, impromptu offerings of flowers, handwritten notes, and homemade crosses mark the two spots where pressure cooker bombs turned a festive event into a scene of mayhem. If you didn’t know that lives and limbs were lost in front of Marathon Sports and the former Forum Restaurant, you’d notice nothing remarkable about these two stretches of sidewalk. But if you know the hidden history of these sites, you recognize them as invisible portals between the Here and the Hereafter: two otherwise ordinary places where souls prematurely crossed to the other side.

Today when I arrived on Boylston Street, a 5K race had just finished, and throngs of people were watching an awards ceremony for the winners. Boylston Street was closed to vehicular traffic, and tourists posed for pictures at the finish line: a festive scene. This is the disconnect that will forever mark the Boston Marathon finish line: a site of both triumph and tragedy, the sidewalk here holds a hidden history of heartbreak.

 

Irrevocable

Yesterday when I heard that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had received the death penalty for his role in the Boston Marathon bombing, I knew I’d have to visit the newly dedicated memorial to slain MIT police officer Sean Collier. Whenever I’m at MIT, I stop by the spot outside the Stata Center where Collier was killed by the Tsarnaev brothers while sitting in his police cruiser, and since I had plans to be at MIT today, paying my respects at the newly dedicated memorial seemed fitting.

When I heard yesterday afternoon that the jury in the Tsarnaev case had reached a decision on his sentence, I stopped what I was doing and turned on the TV to watch. Just as I’d wanted to hear the verdict in the case as soon as it came in, I wanted to hear the sentence as it was announced. But as soon as CNN reported that Tsarnaev had been given the death penalty for placing the bomb that killed Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu, I turned off the news coverage. Although I wanted to hear the sentence that would determine Tsarnaev’s fate, I didn’t want to hear endless editorializing about that sentence.

Instead of listening to opinions and arguments about the wisdom or appropriateness of the sentence—what do you, I, or anyone else think should be done with Dzhokhar—I wanted simply to sit with the solemnity of the decision. What is it like to kill anonymous strangers—innocent bystanders you somehow think have wronged you—and what is it like to hear a sentence of death in return: an official legal pronouncement that he who lives by the sword shall die by it?

Tsarnaev will have ample opportunity to contemplate his own death as his lawyers file appeal after appeal, but neither Collier nor the other Marathon dead had that luxury. Two years ago on a beautiful April day, the Tsarnaev brothers irrevocably changed their own and countless others’ lives with the flip of a switch. Neither the death penalty nor life in prison can change that fact: the dead are still dead, severed limbs are still lost, and the grief-stricken still grieve. “Closure” is a word uttered by optimistic and well-intentioned folks who dare open their mouths in the face of irredeemable heartache. It doesn’t matter whether you, I, or anyone else supports the death penalty: before the jury decided anything, Tsarnaev and his brother made their own irrevocable choice.

The memorial erected to Sean Collier is a graceful and expansive thing, constructed of slabs of smooth gray granite that arch elegantly overhead. The five upright slabs, I read, radiate outwards like the fingers of a hand, but the point where they intersect is empty and ovoid, evoking the empty-handedness that is the human condition. The monument draws you in and invites you to circumnavigate it, and as I walked around taking pictures from this angle and that, several passersby stopped to look at and walk through the monument, touching the stone and reading its inscriptions.

Nobody seemed to be talking about Tsarnaev and his sentence; nobody seemed to be talking at all. When you stand on the spot where a promising life was cut short, it’s difficult to find anything at all to say.

 

The verdict

I don’t normally listen to the radio on my way to and from campus: I prefer the company of my own thoughts. But on my drive home from Curry College today, I turned on the news to fend off sleepiness, and that’s when I heard it: a verdict had been reached in the trial of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The verdict was announced as I pulled into my driveway, and I sat in my car to listen to the first few counts: guilty, guilty, guilty. And just like that April day two years ago, I found myself weeping for the victims, the violence, and the sense of violation. Here in Boston, we take the Marathon bombings personally. A crime was committed in our own neighborhood, and we embrace the victims of that crime as our own.

Throughout Tsarnaev’s trial, I’ve followed media reports of testimony that gave additional details of a story that hits too close to home. I repeatedly watched surveillance footage of carjack victim Dun Meng escaping from the Tsarnaev brothers at a gas station I pass every time I drive to the Zen Center, for instance, and I was stunned to learn that one of the bystanders who tended to BU graduate student Lingzi Lu as she bled to death was Dr. James Bath: J’s primary care physician, and the doctor who gave me nebulizer treatments when I had a respiratory infection last fall. I’m both sobered and saddened to realize the doctor who literally pumped breath back into my body was also there with Lingzi Lu when she breathed her last.

After sitting in my car to hear the verdicts on the first few counts against Tsarnaev, I came inside, turned on the radio, and dried dishes through the rest: guilty on all thirty counts. The verdict doesn’t bring back any of the victims, nor does it restore severed limbs or bring solace to traumatized souls. Neither a verdict nor a sentence can bring closure, as some wounds are too wide to heal. But hearing a jury officially pronounce Tsarnaev guilty on all counts brought a sense that justice had been served. Whether the jury sentences Tsarnaev to death or to life in prison, the decision that matters was announced today. Having seen the destruction the Tsarnaev brothers wrought, a jury decided there is no ideology that can excuse such cruelty.

The photos illustrating today’s post come from a November exhibition of works by Clara Lieu at Framingham State University’s Mazmanian Gallery.