I know you weren’t to know where we live, but I think a good number of you, if you didn’t know already, may have figured it out.. I mean come on. Irish people. Boston. Where else would we be? Anyway, maybe it would have been easier to keep quiet if it were not for the horrific events that occurred in this fine city earlier this week on Monday, April 15th.
Perhaps because it is so close to home, or maybe because it comes so close on the heels of the tragedy in Newtown, but I can’t help but be just very shaken and hurt by this. I only remember feeling similar to this once before on the days following September 11th, 2001 – and perhaps I am not the only American to share this sentiment. It is the feeling of sadness and despair, of helplessness, but also of confusion and fear and anger.
In 2001 I was 14. I remember I was shocked more so than anything. I never gave too much thought about the Middle East, as in, ever. The relationship between Russia and Afghanistan to me was irrelevant then; why should it have mattered to me anyway, when so much of it happened before I was even born? And why should George Bush Sr.’s actions ever affect me? Or the Gulf War – after all I was only 3 or 4 and it wasn’t my fault. And I didn’t really know who Saddam Hussein was nor did I care.. But 9/11 marked a big change in how I’ve come to see the world, as it did for many Americans. I became aware of the U.S. not as where I was from, but as a nation among other nations, each with their own agenda. “Al Qaeda” is now a household name. “Communism” seems like an ancient folk story, an irrational fear – we fight the war on Terror now. And now my niece, who is 13 and was there at the time, will have this to grow up to, to grow into, more fear, more hatred and anger and more terror, if anything it seems.
I’m 25 now and 9/11 echoes in my head as profoundly as ever along with all the other recent tragedies as a nation we’ve had to experience. Obviously I see the world differently now and my emotions have evolved a bit, but that doesn’t make me feel any less. 9/11, Newtown, 4/15, and all sorts of catastrophes, all of these are so different from one another, yet my grief is still the same. Such senseless acts out of what our society has become… And I can’t help but believe that these kinds of things will keep happening until we all work to make a positive change both individually and as a larger national community. Changing the future comes from a group effort to change the way we think and act towards one another; we need to work on loving our neighbors and respecting each other despite nationality, religion or ethnicity; we need to help the weak and speak for the voiceless. Only then will love and respect be reciprocated, only after it is generated within each and every one of us.
I’ll leave off on the email my mother sent to me after I called her, upset with how nothing ever seems fair, upset with the hopelessness of it all, why the innocent seem so often punished and the evildoers do not, upset, in general, with “the way things are.” If you need some consolation as I did, then read it. I hope it will comfort you in a time when things seem very bleak as it did me:
“Hi ________,
It is hard at times like this to be away from you. I wish so much I could be with you and hug you and hold you like when you were little and needed hugs. Nobody ever should grow out of needing hugs and comfort at times like this.
This will sound strange maybe, but I am comforted that you are grieving and sad, because it means you are not hardened to what is going in the world. Don’t let yourself get hardened, too many people need you and everyone to remain human, with human souls and hearts. If you let yourself get hardened, then these monsters who do these things have won and we might as well pack up and go home to our computers and stop being human.
Try to read stories, not necessarily about Boston, because you probably do need to shut the news off for a while. But stories about people doing wonderful, caring work throughout the world. I still believe there are many, many more good people than bad. The bad ones just can do so much spectacular damage that we know about their doings more than the quiet, small-scale good work that good people do.
Try to comfort yourself, but keep your humanity. There is most definitely something about the geographic closeness of an event like this that hits home the hardest. I cried for many days after Newtown. It did help when ______ and I went to Sandy Hook to one of the areas they had set up as a shrine (well, many shrines, it was a pretty big area, as you can imagine). There were many people there, and it was crowded, but we went off to one of the edges of it, and just hugged each other and cried together for a while. Some random woman came to us and asked if she could pray with us. Normally I can’t stand when people are proselytizing, but she wasn’t. She just wanted to pray with us, and she did. I think going there helped me just a little bit, I certainly needed to go and cry. Maybe it might help you if you went to something like this, or just find a quiet reflective place outside by the water, and create your own shrine. Cry as long and hard as you want, it is justified and there is nothing wrong with you for doing so – there is everything right with you to have human feelings.
I just wish I could be there with you. Please know that no matter of the ups and downs in your childhood, I love you more than I can ever tell you and you are so very special to me.
Can’t wait to see you soon… Call me anytime you want to talk.
love you so much,
“We choose love, belief and hope instead of anger,” she continued. “We choose love. Love wins.”
There was more, but I love the simplicity of this.”
irish roommates 