Patriot's Day-"It's Everybody's Marathon"

This is a story I have not shared with many people, in its entirety. To this day, I sometimes get too emotional to finish the story when I'm talking with someone. I'd like to share it here because I can still type if I start crying (I started crying thinking about what I was going to write).

It was April 15, 2013, and I was sitting at my computer working on a few things. I knew my sister Molly was running the Boston Marathon that day. I was super excited for her and knew I would get to hear everything about it after she finished. All of a sudden, I got a text (I can't even remember who it was from) that said something like, "What's going on in Boston?"

I had no idea what the person was talking about (at this point, I can't remember if I looked on the internet and found anything out or not...it's a little blurry). Not much time passed and I got a call from an unknown number. My usual policy is to not answer those but because of that text about Boston, I was anxious and on high alert so I answered it.

It was my sister Molly. She had been one mile from the finish line when the bombs exploded (this is the part of the story where my tears start). Somehow, once they started clearing runners off the course, she had gone into an apartment building and found the one apartment that still had a land line. Luckily, we had been talking quite a bit that past year because of various stressful and dramatic elements in our personal lives. Molly had my phone number memorized because we usually only had time to talk during the day and she called me from a land line...so my number was the only one she had memorized that day because everyone else she called from her cell phone.

She told me that she was okay but she wasn't able to get a hold of her boyfriend (now husband) and his mom. She wanted me to text them and let them know where she was and that she was okay. I texted them but cell lines were jammed...it was a while before I was able to talk to him. And I didn't know it at the time, but he and his mom had been near the finish line, waiting for Molly to cross. They were helping people who had been injured when the bomb went off from inside a store for running gear near the blast site.

This is all difficult for me to think about on a number of levels. All three of the people I knew there...it could have been any or all of them that were killed or maimed...and I am so unbelievably grateful that it wasn't. Then, when I think that, I think how sad I am for all of the people and families who cannot say the same thing and I try to remind myself that you can feel two things at once...grateful for my family and sad for those beautiful people who lost much more...and I don't have to feel guilty about that.

It's hard for me to think about the people who were running and those who were there supporting those runners in one of the most iconic running events in the world. I imagine them joyous and excited and that was all torn away in one horrific instant...in some cases, it was torn away forever. I think about how life is so weird and if Molly and I hadn't been talking incessantly about whatever it was we were talking about so many times that she had my number memorized, she wouldn't have been able to get a hold of me or anyone. She was okay, so obviously something would have worked out but in the meantime, the angst would have been unbearable. I think about my brother-in-law who, to this day, cannot go back to the finish line of the marathon...and all of the other lives that were traumatized that day. And I think about how in the aftermath, a city and a nation pulled together and managed to find love and unity in the midst of fear and hate.

I saw the movie Patriot's Day a couple weeks ago. The movie really brought to life what was hard to imagine from reading about that day or hearing about it through the news. I cried throughout pretty much the entire movie. That day is one of those days that will forever be emblazoned in my memory.

Some of you who follow the blog and a lot of you who know me personally know that I qualified for Boston Marathon and I am running it on Patriot's Day this April 17. I've been a runner for almost my entire adult life and Boston was always a far off dream for me...something I'd hoped for and secretly didn't know if that dream would ever come true. Even when I qualified, it was kind of an accident (read my post "Bumbling and Beating the Drum to Boston").

Boston is special for that reason and it is emotional and even more special for me because of Patriot's Day 2013. I think about being there and running and I get emotional. When it's cold and I don't want to go for a run, I think about that day in 2013 and I think how grateful I am to be out running and how I will run for all of those people, runners and non, who were traumatized and terrorized that day and the following days. I might be crying the entire marathon but I will run and be grateful for every mile.

P.S. Molly ran Boston the very next year and finished the marathon. I admire her greatly for that. I am truly blessed to have such a strong, beautiful, fearless woman as my sister and one of my best friends.

P.P.S. There is a new documentary called BOSTON that will be released April 14, the Friday before Patriot's Day. Just watching the trailer was amazing. BOSTON