Eleven Years On

I'm reprising something I wrote years ago on this date because there was nothing else to write but the words of the next paragraphs. And here we are another year on, and no sense still makes no sense and good and decent people still have holes in their hearts where their loved ones used to be.

Today is Patriots' Day in Massachusetts and also the traditional running of the Boston Marathon. That order of precedence, if you will, was altered and changed forever because of circumstances officially recalled in this news account on the first anniversary of a day that we all now recall.

In 2013 at the Boston Marathon, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev two evil, ungrateful bastards whom we took in and who repaid that kindness by killing innocents, 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 long fade 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 Dzorkhar's ass all the way to Boston Harbor and then hold him under until the bubbles stop.

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, but it will not be today.

I have a Facebook friend, a Fenway habitue and Grammy-nominee, who spent years on the Jersey Shore and has now followed the advice of 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 all those who are enjoying it.

-bill kenny