Last week, two years after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, a federal jury voted to condemn Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for what is considered the worst terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11. The decision was not arrived at lightly, as Massachusetts has no death penalty for state crimes. Reactions were mixed. I didn’t sense from what I read that anyone took pleasure in the verdict, including some victims and their families. Some would have preferred that Mr. Tsarnaef were given a life sentence but most hoped the verdict would at least bring some closure to one of the darker moments of our history. However, appeals are to follow, and that will only prolong the suffering of victims and their families.
It was scary that day in the Boston neighborhood when a bomb went off. When I first heard about it, I remember being stunned. I felt angry, then frightened, sad and finally confused. Again in our world, guns and bombs, more hate and more violence. Why?
How does anyone harbor such hatred and feel driven to express it in such sadistic ways? The explosion, I read, had been engineered to disperse shrapnel at near ground level tearing apart the legs and lower torsos of runners and bystanders, a vicious touch to a vengeful act. There are dark sides to our human condition.
At the marathon, people had gathered to celebrate life, to take pleasure in their mobility, to delight in the simple joy of being alive on a sunny day and to enjoy the feeling of being a part of a community. Joy is life’s premier gift. Joy wants to be celebrated, and it wants a community to celebrate with.
The violence seemed meaningless to me. I know that in the perpetrators’ minds the calculated violence was purposeful and justified. I cannot see how. Madness? A sense of righteous indignation, perhaps? Some messianic delusions, or were they two deprived or abused boys who knew only hatred and violence? Only God knows.
We’ll soon hear theories about why the brothers acted as they did.
The theories will be only explanations, attempts to be rational about what isn’t rational, and while explanations may serve psychological or perhaps social curiosity, they will ultimately satisfy none of the survivors of the incident. Reasons offer cold comfort. Comfort can be found in adversity, but not from explanations. Comfort comes from those who show up to offer a helping hand. The helping hands seem to materialize, appearing as if out of thin air.
Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood once said, “When I was a boy, and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
This quote went viral in the media. It struck a chord. I had the thought that Mr. Roger’s ghost had returned to earth to assure the victims of a violent world someone is always going to be there to offer a helping hand. Mr. Rogers knew all about the dark side of the human condition. He spent his life helping children to embrace that darker side of life so they would not have to be afraid of it. It’s hard for kids or adults to have a beautiful day in the neighborhood when they’re hurt, feel alone or are scared to death. Then, at times like this, as if from nowhere, a helping hand appears.
In the Boston neighborhood that day, there were helping hands everywhere: they shepherded people through their fear, held one another, prayed together. A physician who ran the race continued on running to the hospital where he could operate on the wounded. Nurses left private homes and showed up just to lend a hand, and soon a sense of solidarity in suffering arose from the desolation left by the carnage.
As the shock of a crisis settles, grief and mourning begin. It is a slow process. There’s a lot of darkness that must be traveled in order to heal. For grief and mourning to do its work, it must have helpers, like midwives comfort and encourage mothers who endure the pain of birth. There is no birth here but there will be for many, although unwelcomed, the beginning of new lives.
Helpers traveled with the wounded through the dark that day, lifted up the injured, held the grieving, calmed the frightened, helpers who just ‘showed up’ and listened to the stories of fear, loss and sadness that must be told. Healing requires the kind of listening that communicates to the sufferers, that they are not alone.
In Boston that day, there was evidence of a healing presence, the kind Mr. Rogers communicated to children who feared they’d be lost in the dark.
It was a terrible day in Boston’s neighborhood. But neighbors endured because of the helpers that offered a hand. It made all the difference in the world, the difference between despair and hope.
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