evensong.
 |
| Moment of silence, April 22, 2013, 2:50pm |
On April 10 I was on a plane. Kevin and I were returning from a 2-week trip to the UK, where we had visited England, Wales, and Scotland. As we settled into our seats for the long flight home, I flipped through our guide book and itineraries, reliving each interaction, each long walk, each wonder that left us speechless, overtaken with beauty and history. One night I couldn't forget was the first night we spent in York. Famous for being the most haunted town in all of England, York seemed an exciting place for us to visit (Kevin loves all things haunted and spooky, while I shudder at night when the wind blows through the trees. We're quite a pair.). After a long walk through the city, we ate dinner at The Golden Fleece - the most haunted pub in York, with over 100 different ghosts reported through the years. The interior was dark and cramped, and the air was heavy. I got chills just looking at the photos on the wall, the "Beware of the Ghosts" sign tacked up next to news articles documenting people's ghost sightings. The rooms upstairs were frequently rented out by ghost hunters, and I reminded Kevin that under no condition, never, ever, would I agree to stay there. But we could drink beer and eat Yorkshire pudding and steak pie and enjoy the thrill of the pub.
Once we finished our meal, a young man in a top hat and coat tails stopped at our table and asked if we were joining his walk. We'd previously decided to skip the various ghost walks in town, because they seemed cheesy and the night was pretty chilly for an hour long walk through haunted streets. But he explained that his walk wasn't a ghost tour - it was a history tour called "Trail of Terror" - because, as he reasoned, "You can decide you don't believe in ghosts, but you can't not believe in history!" His logic was sound. We paid 5 pounds each and waited outside for the walk to begin.
*
On April 15, I walked to work from the train, smiling out at the city from the Longfellow Bridge, thinking about the marathon. Ever since running it in 2007, I always feel a little guilty on Marathon Monday. "I should have trained this year," I think. But this particular morning, I simply felt happy. It was a beautiful day, and I knew what the day would mean for so many people.
Later, at lunch time, I sat in our common area and watched the elite runners finish the race. I remembered my own run, as well as years of watching from the sidelines, cheering on strangers and giving out high fives to anyone in reach. I knew that on my way home I would undoubtedly walk past dozens of runners with their foils wrapped around their shoulders, and I would congratulate them. After my lunch hour was over, I went back to my desk, anticipating the walk ahead.
*
The walk began silly enough. It was getting dark, and our guide had a theatrical way of speaking, his voice rising and falling with the drama of his stories. He pointed out gravestones, described unspeakable ways that people had been tortured in the very street where we stood, and made dark jokes about York's terrifying medieval history. The stories of gore, torture, and execution were difficult to hear, but my heart wasn't gripped with icy fear until we stopped in front of a small stone building in between the market square and the York Minster (the largest gothic cathedral in northern Europe). Here our guide lowered his voice and dropped all traces of humor. "I cannot joke about this, nor can I fully grasp it, as I do not have children." I huddled closer to Kevin, afraid of the story to come.
*
As I usually do while working, I checked Twitter. My feed was full of strange messages - "explosion" "smoke" "what happened?" "are you ok?" "bomb?"
I ran back to the common area, along with several coworkers. We watched in horror at the people scrambling out of the way, racing down Boylston Street while sirens rang and emergency vehicles filled the scene. We asked questions, we tried to get answers from our cell phones, and we responded to text messages from people asking if we were ok. My dad called. "We're both at work, Dad," I assured him, though I didn't know if I was actually safe. "We're ok, just shaken." For the rest of the day I watched the news online, desperate and afraid to hear the rest of the story.
*
The small stone building had been servants' quarters when the plague finally arrived in York. Over twenty people had lived there, including a family: father, mother, six-year-old daughter. As the plague spread through the building, the sick had to be left inside to avoid spreading the plague further. Our guide didn't need to tell us to imagine the fear, the screams of agony, the smell of death. The family were the only three who hadn't been infected - until one morning, they woke up and noticed red bumps on the girl's neck and face, one of the first warning signs of the plague.
Instead of staying in the building with their daughter, they locked and boarded up the door, painted a red X on the outside (to let everyone know it was quarantined), and left York. For days and weeks the little girl screamed out the window - to the people in the market and the people going to church - screaming for help, for food, for rescue from the home that was full of dying and dead bodies. Finally, she fell quiet.
The bodies were removed from the stone building, and an autopsy was performed on the little girl. The physician was mystified - the girl's organs were red, not black, and she had no signs of plague sores (giant, painful sores that swell and burst, usually near the groin, armpit, and neck). Further inspection revealed that the little girl never had the plague. She simply had a rash, likely the chicken pox. She had died of starvation, abandoned by her parents and ignored by everyone who had heard her screams for help.
*
It didn't take long to identify the three people who were killed by the bombs. They were young. They had families who loved them, who promised to take care of them. They died for no reason. And among the dead were the injured, the bloody, the shell-shocked. The people lying on the ground unable to move, unable to feel their limbs, unable to hear, see, or respond. Boylston Street was quarantined off, though people still came in and out, pulling out the injured, responding on the scene with makeshift tourniquets and promises that help was on the way.
I continued to watch the news, even though I knew I should take a break. I looked at photo slideshows that warned of graphic images. I stared at people's faces, dazed with shock, winced with pain, or twisted with grief. This isn't how it was supposed to happen, I kept thinking. This isn't how those 200+ people were supposed to live the rest of their lives, on crutches and in wheelchairs and on painkillers. This isn't how those three people were supposed to die, young and terrorized. None of this was their fault; somebody had dropped a backpack and left them to die.
*
It was the little girl who kept me up all night. My body felt tense, my heart felt like a clenched fist, and my eyes darted around in fear. Everywhere I looked in our small hotel room, I was convinced the little girl was going to haunt me. To beg for help. To look at me with sunken eyes and cry for rescue. Kevin assured me that our room wasn't haunted, that we were safe, that I should try to get some sleep.
If I closed my eyes, I was afraid I would open them and see the little girl standing at the foot of my bed. If I left my eyes open, I was afraid I would see something move, become suddenly aware of a presence. For the rest of the night (no exaggeration - this went on until about 4 or 5 in the morning), I turned the light on and read, working my way through the complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, while Kevin tried to fall back asleep after each light-on-light-off disruption. After an hour of reading, I'd decide I was tired enough to sleep, turn off the light and close my eyes, shake with fear, then turn the light back on. I recited the 23rd Psalm. I sang hyms in my head. I told all ghosts to "Leave me the f#@& alone!" And I cried quietly to myself, ashamed of my fear. I was 30 years old...why couldn't I just go to sleep? I remembered our guide's words, that there was nothing to joke about. This wasn't a silly, exaggerated ghost story. This was the epitome of horror, of sadness, of human cruelty. And I simply couldn't sleep through it.
*
On April 22nd I left my office at 2:45 and walked down to the Charles River. I stood under a tree in bloom, staring out at the city on the water, and at 2:50 I closed my eyes and prayed. At 2:51 I went back to my desk and posted a photo of the spot where I'd observed my moment of silence.
The next day I walked down to Copley Square on my lunch break. I was feeling more peace than I had since the bombings, and the sight of the memorial was sad, but not overwhelming. I knew my city would move on, that the injured would find new meaning and purpose in their lives, that I was lucky to be alive and free to walk in the sunshine. And then I noticed the comfort dogs were there, the same dogs that had traveled to Newtown, CT. "Can I pet your dog?" I asked one of the owners. "Of course," he said, smiling, "That's why they're here." I smiled at the sweet golden retriever, whose name was Liberty, and as I stroked the soft, silky fur, I lost all control. The tears I hadn't cried all week. The sadness I hadn't been able to feel under all the anxiety. The feeling that I wasn't a grown-up after all, but a scared, tired little kid who didn't understand what was happening. I scratched the dog behind the ears, stood up, and walked back to the office.
That afternoon I walked home across the Longfellow Bridge, looking out at my beautiful city, the sunlight sparkling on the water while a gentle breeze waved the trees back and forth. At the base of the bridge, only steps from Massachusetts General Hospital where news vans and police cars had been staked out all week, I stopped and looked up. A white cherry blossom was in full bloom, its branches reaching over the edge of the bridge so I could reach out and feel a silky blossom in my hand.
*
The day after my sleepless night, I was exhausted. I decided I hated York, I was sick of being scared, and I was ready to leave. But we still had one more night. And I told Kevin what I really wanted was to go to the Evensong service at the York Minster that night. Evensong is a choral service, delivered almost entirely in song, and dates back to the earliest Anglican churches. I wasn't raised in a liturgical church tradition, so I thought an Anglican church service would be mysterious and powerful. I knew I needed to go.
As the choir began to sing, I took in the stained glass, the acoustics of the church, the ancient symbolism and the echoes of the choir. And I was...lifted. The clenched fist of my heart seemed to slowly open up. My tense shoulders started to relax. The sun shone in through the highest stained glass, and the choir sang impossibly high notes, and I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I remembered my sleepless night, breathed in, listened to the singing, breathed out. I thought of the little girl in the stone building, breathed in, looked up at the golden rays of sun, breathed out.
I was still alive. Hadn't been abandoned, left for dead, or forgotten. I could still feel. And while my ability to feel had brought me to the darkest places of despair, fear, and sadness, it had also brought me up to places of peace, of joy, of life.
*
I let the cherry blossom tree gently blow above me, breathing the air deeply and wondering how long the blossoms had been there. When had spring arrived? I tried to remember. I'd been in the UK for two weeks, and then, well, somewhere else for the week of April 15. I realized that whole week life had been steadily growing, coming into bloom, even though I hadn't noticed it. I'd never noticed the flowers, or the trees, or the grass that was bursting into the beautiful, life-giving glory of spring. I hadn't been able to see anything through the grief and fear, the anxiety, the disbelief. And yet, while my head was down, life had emerged. I looked back at the river, lifted my head, and walked home.