The first I heard about the Boston Marathon bombing was when my father called Monday evening to tell me my nephew was uninjured. My nephew goes to school in Boston, and had been watching the race, but not at the finish line. I’d been driving home from out of town, listening to CDs instead of the radio, so I hadn’t known a thing about it. Sometimes, having a weird schedule is useful.

The slight time lag in finding out about it didn’t make the event any easier to process. In fact, it brought up a whole lot of unpleasant memories of hearing about earlier disasters of one sort or another, from Sandy Hook and Columbine to 9/11, from the tsunamis in Japan and the Indian Ocean to Columbia and Challenger, all the way back to Kennedy’s assassination. Some of those horrors were man-made and deliberate; some were the result of terrible mistakes or accidents; some were just nature being nature.  Apart from the fact that people died every time, there’s no connection between them except for the personal one: I remember the same sinking feeling combined with shock as I heard about each of them.

There are a whole lot of known psychological reactions to unexpected tragedy, starting with shock, disbelief, and feeling helpless, but I think the psychologists miss something when they look only at the emotions people have. They miss what people do.

People didn’t panic (which could have caused a lot more injuries, given the crowd). Some of them ran towards the explosion, and not only the police and firefighters and medical personnel who were on the job. A lot of people who were there as spectators did, too, and worked to help the injured. Some of them we know about, and some we don’t.

People who live in Boston signed on to web sites to offer their spare rooms to strangers who were stranded, or who suddenly needed a place to stay while a friend or family member was in the hospital. Others turned up with bottles of juice, water, and sweaters for the bewildered slower runners who weren’t allowed to finish because of the explosions. People who don’t live in Boston coordinated “random acts of pizza,” sending food to the police, firefighters, EMTs, anyone who needed it.

And people talked about what happened, and their reactions to it.  Some of us aren’t in a place where we can do anything but talk…and watch the news, and hope that the death toll doesn’t rise and that they catch whoever planted the bombs. But even that little is doing something, of a sort.

And as far as I’m concerned, doing what one can is important, whether that’s running toward an explosion in order to help, walking calmly away from it so that the EMTs will be able to get in and do their job, or donating $10 worth of pizza to feed the people who are in the thick of things.

9 Comments
  1. Thank you so much for highlighting the really good things that people do when confronted with tragedies of this sort. The shock and sinking feeling you describe so well makes it easy to plunge into a dark space and stay there. I need help to climb out again, and meditating on the courage and resource and generosity of those responding to the emergency helps a lot. Thank you.

  2. I was horrified when I found out about Boston and I still don’t understand how some people could be so uncaring about their fellow men to take innocent lives. I am glad there were people there who helped, since it helps restore my faith in the world.

  3. I am so glad your nephew wasn’t hurt. Thank you for telling us about the good that people are doing in response to the tragedy.

  4. Like others have said, thanks for helping me focus on the positive things that people did. I heard about the explosions almost as soon as they happened, and then had to wait 4+ hours to hear back from family in the area. I’ve been having trouble shaking off that dread. It’s like it settled in, even though everyone I know turned out to be OK. I’m glad your family is OK, too.

  5. Oh my goodness! What is your news source? Because these are marvelous things (random acts of pizza, and the couch-surfing for emergencies), and I hadn’t heard of them at all. I’m so happy you posted about this. Many of the blogs I’ve read have been unhappy about the news and the way it’s been handled.

    It looks like there’s more than one way to handle this sort of news, and I’d like to support the news sources who do this . . . .

  6. And then there are those who write songs [with listenable, downloadable mp3s & sheet music] about it:

    http://www.hwaet.org/Songbook/LookForTheHelpers.html

    This song, like your excellent post, mentions lots of the good things folks were able to do.

  7. I was very glad to hear of the kindnesses people handed out. That reminded me of when all of the planes were brought down on 9/11 and we rallied to give the stranded places to stay in our homes, here in Vancouver BC.
    It’s kindnesses like that which are far stronger than kids with bombs.
    I wished I was closer to help the people there.
    There was a large contingent from BC that had gone to Boston for the run, and they came home and told their stories.
    The BC Sun Run got a whole lot of extra people who ran in it, and everyone wore blue and yellow, and sent about $2,000 that was collected to Boston
    Laurie

    • Laurie! I haven’t seen you since Fidonet; how are you doing?