The Passage of a Dark Decade

Ten years ago, Boston was celebrating as they do every year a state holiday, Patriots' Day in Massachusetts, and also the traditional running of the Boston Marathon.

Except, a decade ago, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev those evil, ungrateful bastards whom we took in and who repaid that kindness with killing, broke hearts, destroyed lives, and shattered our national illusion of insularity and insulation from the other horrors of the rest of the world and altered forever anyone's memories and imaginings of the Boston Marathon.

Both brothers will be long faded from memory before what they did is forgotten, but better remembered, and hopefully always remembered, is what they failed to do. Just ask Jeff Baumann, who gets stronger every day and whom I fervently hope gets angry and powerful enough someday to kick the ass of Dzorkhar all the way to Boston Harbor and then hold him under until the bubbles stop.

We're another year on, point, in fact, a full decade on, and no sense still makes no sense and people still have holes in their hearts where loved ones used to be. I understand being an angry old man will get me nothing but an even more premature grave and I should take my cue from those who not only survived but triumphed over the tragedy of that day. Perhaps I shall, starting tomorrow.

I have a Facebook friend, a Fenway denizen and Grammy-nominee who spent a lot of years on the Jersey Shore and has now heeded Horace Greeley and gone west, Linda Chorney, who repurposed and molded her sorrow to create a beautiful celebration of a life taken terribly, suddenly and far too soon into a song perfectly suited for today and for all those enjoying it.
-bill kenny