Boston
Marathon.

When the first bomb exploded at last year’s Boston Marathon, David Fortier grabbed his ear drums. He had just reached mile 26.19. Fortier describes his hearing now as if you put your head next to a fluorescent light and kept it there. His doctors say that it may never go away. He says he feels lucky that his injuries weren’t more devastating and that he is running in this year’s race. “I had a great time for 26.19 miles,” he says. “Once everything gets put back together, there will be a lot of people back. It’s become a huge part of our lives.”

Since the first few moments in the hospital, Brittany has had a positive attitude about healing, and we wanted a message that epitomized what our experience has been. The love and outreach of our community far outweighs the negativity of the event.

When really bad things happen, really good people step up. Throughout the first few weeks, when Brittany was just starting her recovery, I would read her emails from friends and people from her past. They really helped brighten her day and help her maintain her positive attitude. Cards arrived at the hospital from children around the country who wanted to reach out, and their honesty and well wishes made us smile. Her colleagues at Boston College’s MBA program made a schedule and dropped off dinners for us, which was immensely helpful. It was just incredible to witness the outreach first hand.

“Love this life” has been my motto since the bombing. I spent a lot of time prior to the bombing always seeking out the next thing in my career and putting the majority of my focus on finding the right career for myself and on school. I didn’t always take time to focus on those around me — my family and friends, the ones who I’d want to spend my last days with. Since the bombing, I’ve decided to spend each day as if it were my last. This to me means focusing on and acting more graciously to all of those around me. It also means spending as much time with friends and family as possible and viewing those I love as the center of my universe.

I’ve learned to not take any moment for granted, to never leave a loved one angry, and to always tell people how you feel about them because you never know if you’ll get another chance. I’ve also learned that there is more to life than I thought there was, but it is not in the way I thought. The ordinary parts of life are very fulfilling if we take the time to focus on them and cherish them.

I wrote “I Run for Martin.” I’ve been down with a hamstring, I haven’t run in 4 weeks. I came out trying to do 13 or 14 miles, and I ended up doing 18. I saw the Richards family at the starting line in Natick, and the strength and the courage that they’ve shown through this tragedy gave me inspiration to run today. I can go out and run through pain. They’re a true inspiration to the meaning of Boston.

(Mike is a Watertown Police Officer who is running this year’s marathon. We actually caught him finishing a training run and asked him to participate. We’re thankful you said yes, Mike!)

One thing that I’ve learned since last April is that in the world there are many bad people, but that there are also many good people that outweigh the bad people. When the bombings occurred, immediately there were people from all around the world of all ages who supported in any way they could.

My name is Angela Papageorgiou, and I am from Athens, Greece. This message has three different layers in it. I’m a runner, and running Boston is for me, as for many runners, the dream of dreams. And another level of significance is I’m Greek so, the marathon originated from there, so that’s an additional level of significance. And most of all, this past year I have learned that love is more dominant over everything else and through the events of 4/15.

My message was “Gratitude Jack Claire Tom Hugh.” I feel very lucky to be alive and very grateful to my family and friends, the first responders, all the folks at MGH, MEEI, and Spaulding, and the City of Boston for all their support. I am especially grateful to my four kids, whom I believe are the reason that I am still around. My soul is so full of gratitude that there is no room in me for sadness, anger, or fear.

My name is Elizabeth Bermingham. I live in Waltham, MA, and I moved to Boston about seven years ago. On my body I wrote “Resilient and 26.2.” After the marathon bombing, one of the things that really seemed to resonate with me was the idea of being resilient. What does it take to come back from something that’s really difficult? A tragedy, something really unexpected, something that takes your life and completely shakes it up. And that’s what happened to me. On the morning of the 15th, I was a normal special education teacher, but by the afternoon of the 15th I felt like my life had been completely derailed and had been forever changed. So how do I get back to the person who I was, or the person who I was with a new perspective of what it’s like to encounter this type of unexpected tragedy? I’d also had a lot of previous loss in my life, so being resilient and being able to come back from difficult things was really important to me. That’s been the focus of my last year, as we’ve gone from April 15, 2013 to April 15, 2014, is how to be resilient. How do you find resiliency day to day? How do you find it in big picture? How do you become healthier, more normal, more typical, how do come back from something like this, a tragedy?

The most frightened I’ve ever been was after the first bomb went off, and I realized what was happening. I was pretty convinced that we were going to die. That building was going to fall on us, that something was going to happen. I realized pretty quickly… as soon as the bomb went off I thought, that’s a bomb and then my brain thought oh no no, it couldn’t possibly be a bomb, you’re on Boylston Street in the marathon? It’s got to be an electrical issue, something has to have exploded, a transformer. And then I heard the second bomb, and I knew that we were in very serious danger. And it wasn’t until later that I had even realized that I was hurt. But initially I knew something was very wrong, and we needed to leave immediately.

I’d say in terms of resiliency and coming back and training for the marathon, and even coming back from having something happen to you and trying to feel more normal, it’s less physically centered and it’s more in your brain almost. That it’s like your brain has to learn how to communicate again. It has to bring this experience, put it into memory. They’ve explained to us a bunch of different times in our group that flashbacks, and pieces of that, is your brain not quite communicating and not translating this experience into your normal memory. That takes a long time, and it’s really difficult, and so as you run… what I’ve found as I’m running and as I’m out on the course, I find myself both thinking about last year’s marathon and then next year’s marathon, and trying to replace in my head the images of horror with images of triumph.

Every day my wife and I try to move on with our lives. We try to get back to where we were before this terrible incident took place after 36 years of marriage. Some days are easier than others, but we are reminded every day now about what we went through by some part of the media/news. All we can do is “move on” to the next chapter of our lives together. We are also reminded of what we went through by the pain & suffering we still go through every day both physically and mentally.

The prayer below also sums up what I have set as something to strive for each day.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

Born and raised just south of the city of Boston, my message needed to relate to the people of this great city. It was important for me to depict strength and power in the picture as well, but limit my face because the image is for all Bostonians. The concept of six degrees of separation doesn’t exist in Boston — it’s more like 3 degrees.