by Jeff Bauman
I felt kind of bad for him, actually. Not as bad as I did for the victims, but a little. He was only nineteen, and when you’re nineteen, you do stupid stuff. I did, and you probably did, too. Sure, very few people do something that stupid or evil—and there’s no other word for it; blowing up strangers is evil—but he was still just a depressed teenager acting like a jerk.
You get only two or three important choices in life. What job you do, whom you marry. Those are big decisions. If you’re right about those two decisions, you’ll probably be happy.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev made the worst decision possible. He destroyed his own life, and he took out innocent people in the process. He’s nineteen, and he won’t have a chance to make any other important decisions. He’s done.
I don’t want to give his defense any ideas. I don’t want them to say, “Jeff Bauman isn’t angry at my client,” because that’s not my place. We should decide his fate together, because that’s what our country is about. I hope he stays in jail forever.
But still, I mostly blame his brother. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and I, we were similar. We were both twenty-seven when the bomb went off; we each had a brother who was nineteen. I know how powerful that position is, because I know the way my brother looks up to me. He would do anything I ask. Alan is Air Force Strong, now that he’s been through boot camp, so maybe he’s different, but a year ago… anything I told him, he would have believed.
I read about Tamerlan recently. I avoided it for a long time, but after a while I wanted to know. What I found was a bully. A boxer who quit but still liked to beat people up. A man who’d scream at the leader of his mosque. Who’d intimidate people in his neighborhood. He had a terrible temper. He assaulted his girlfriend. He was married, but his wife was just another person to bully and abuse. He was a man whose religion—no, not his religion, but his interpretation of his religion—wouldn’t allow a woman to be his equal.
Maybe that was the biggest difference between him and me, I sometimes think. He had a whipping post. I have a partner.
I go back to those big decisions. Maybe I think about them, because I’m in the process of making them now. I’m at the time in life when you become an adult. When you have to make big decisions to determine who you will be, because not making them becomes a decision in itself.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev… he was too small. He couldn’t handle it. He was a loser. He needed to stand up, but he blew everything up instead. He wasn’t mad about our treatment of Muslims. I mean, he was, and I can see why. We’ve killed kids over there, I can’t deny that.
But that was not why Tamerlan set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon. He set off the bomb because his life hadn’t worked out yet, and he was afraid to keep trying. He thought the world wasn’t fair. He was right: the world isn’t fair. Life is tough. There are people committing suicide at factories in China, just so we can have cheap iPhones. That sucks.
But do you blow the whole thing up? No. Hell no. There are other ways. Setting off a bomb, or shooting up an elementary school, doesn’t make you bigger. It makes you the smallest kind of person on earth. The kind who has to blame others, because you can’t face yourself.
I guess I am angry about that. I’m angry that a loser like Tamerlan Tsarnaev found a way to hurt other people. He’s gone, and the only thing he left on this earth was victims.
No, I won’t give him that. I’m not his victim. Neither are the Corcorans or the Odoms or all the other people I admire. We’re all going to be stronger, even the families of the ones we lost. I won’t give in to anger, because being angry will make me more like him. But also because anger means he mattered. And he didn’t. His life was nothing.
The victim of his hatred and cowardice, in the end, was his own brother.
I heard the Rolling Stone article ended with Dzhokhar crying for two straight days in his hospital room. People were confused by that. They wondered what he was crying about.
I’m not confused. He was a human being. He killed a child. Of course he cried. Why wouldn’t he? He was done.
I was at the beach.
And sure, part of my visit to Maine was painful, and part of it was frustrating. I sat at the end of the walk, staring at the beach. I couldn’t move in the sand, either in my wheelchair or with my artificial legs. I was stuck, until Uncle Dale scooped me up, put me on his back, and carried me to our blanket, piggyback style.
The day was warm, but the beer was cool. I looked at the water and thought about Mrs. Corcoran, and how she had loved to walk on the beach, and how she cried because she’d never do that again. She was right. Neither of us would ever walk on the beach. That sucked. But with Erin and the Forehead beside me, and a beer in my hand, life was good.
That’s what I meant when I said, “He’s dead, and I’m still here.” I meant that Tamerlan would never feel the sunshine.
I still had people to love.
33.
After the trip to the shore, Erin and I started looking for an apartment in Boston. Living in Boston would make things easier for my physical therapy at Spaulding, and also for Erin to eventually find another job. She didn’t want to commute between the city and Chelmsford, and Boston had far more opportunities. Besides, I’d always wanted to move into the city. Erin and I had loved hanging in Brighton before the bombing; we had friends like Michele and Remy there, and favorite coffee shops and restaurants. It seemed ideal. We could rent for a year, and see if it was as perfect as we thought.
It took one apartment-hunting trip to realize it wasn’t going to work. Being in the city with Erin was fine, and attending events was always fun, but when I thought about being in an apartment alone, or out on the street trying to get to the store late at night, my heart started to race.
I remembered the words of Commissioner Davis on the morning of the manhunt. “We believe this to be a terrorist. We believe this to be a man who came here to kill people.”
He was wrong. The Tsarnaev brothers hadn’t come here to kill us; they already had been here. Whatever else they were, they were part of us. They were Boston, too.
If it wasn’t going to be Boston, we both knew that meant finding a place in Chelmsford. It was a big change for Erin. Her life had been in the city, and even when she moved to Mom’s to help me, she always assumed she’d be back. So we took it slow, looking at a few apartments a week. There are nice apartments in Lowell and Chelmsford, mostly in converted mills and factories, but we couldn’t find anything we liked.
I don’t think our hearts were really in it. Mom’s apartment was temporary, even though I had been living there for years. It had always seemed temporary; the place I stayed before my life’s big decisions were made. Now it was clear I had outgrown it. I needed to take care of Erin, and myself, by moving on.
I was thinking about the future, something Erin and I had avoided in the months since the bombing. The future—my lifetime of disability—was overwhelming. So we kept our focus on the day ahead. Get better. Get stronger. Do what you need, today, to be normal again.
Whenever people asked what I wanted, that’s what I told them, “I just want to be normal.”
Again and again, I hear it in interviews and articles: “I just want to be normal.” To me, that meant walking. I wanted to be confident enough to walk at the 2014 Boston Marathon: no matter the crowd, no matter the fear or bad memories, I wanted to walk.
I knew that meant meeting each of the shorter goals Michelle set for me. I was using crutches instead of the walker. I had been outside and walked in the grass. I was almost ready for stairs. That was my current goal: to walk up and down a flight of stairs. Beyond that, I tried not to think ahead.
But now that Erin and I were moving into our own space, we had to think about the future. Where were we going to be in five years? What did we want?
What does normal really mean?
Erin summarized it best. “There are two ways to go,” she said. “We can try to put this behind us. You can go back to Costco, and I can go back to hospital adminis
tration, and we can try to live a normal life. Or we can embrace the change, and try to do good.”
It was a serious question, and one we still haven’t answered. Mom knew what she wanted for me: she wanted me to embrace the opportunity. The idea that her son could be a role model for others, that he could raise money for the needy and inspire those dealing with tragedy—I don’t think it was something she ever imagined could happen. When she thought of my future, she had always pictured an engineer with a nice house in North Chelmsford.
But what could I do to help the world?
I had money, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I had no idea how to set up a charity. And who would my charity benefit? There were so many people seriously injured who didn’t have anyone to help them. I had seen plenty at Spaulding.
There were thousands of children battling cancer. I had met them at charity events.
A chancellor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell had written to me about a scholarship for victims of the bombing. “If in the future, if you look again toward UMass Lowell, please know that we will do everything we can to make this campus a welcoming place for you,” the chancellor wrote.
But I didn’t need their help now. I had needed it then, when I was nobody, and $900 could have changed my life. Should I try to help others in a similar situation?
Erin would have to be involved, of course, in any charity work. I’d be the face; she’d be in charge. But would she be happy? Or did she need her own job, away from Jeff Bauman World?
“You can write a book,” Kat suggested.
Ummm…
“It would get your story out, the way you want it told.”
But…
“And it could help people. Inspire them.”
I’m not so sure…
“And you wouldn’t have to talk to the media. Not until the book came out, anyway.”
Okay, now you’re talking.
Mom loved the idea. Erin wasn’t convinced. Actually, that’s wrong. She hated the idea. She’s a private person. She didn’t want to invite strangers into our lives.
But she could see the advantages, too. She wanted to help people. Erin cares about others more than anyone I’ve ever known.
And I knew I needed something to do. Maybe I even needed a way to think about what I’d been through. A book wasn’t just telling my story. It was putting the story behind me. It was taking all those memories, and putting them in a box, and then shoving that box on the top shelf, where I didn’t have to look at it, but where it would always be when I needed it. When I was ready.
As long as it didn’t tire me too much, I told Erin, a book might be like therapy.
“It’s your decision,” Erin said. “I only have one request. If you’re going to do it, do it right.”
A few days later, Erin and I were having lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, Joe’s American Bar and Grill, in downtown Boston. It was her mom’s birthday. I knew Erin’s mom had taken what happened to me hard, and that she wanted to be a part of my recovery, even if she never asked. So I had invited her to physical therapy with me that morning, then to lunch. The restaurant is on Newbury Street, two blocks from where the bombs went off on Boylston Street. I thought I’d be okay, since those are just regular city blocks now, and they’ve cleaned up all the blood.
But being in that part of town, I have to admit, made me nervous. It reminded me that evil existed. That terrible things could be done to you when you least expected it. If a bomb could go off on Boylston Street, why not here?
So while I loved the lunch, and especially the company, by the end I was ready to go. But when I asked for the check, the waitress told us it had already been paid.
“By who?” I asked.
“They wanted to remain anonymous.”
I gave her the puppy-dog eyes. Who can resist a man in a wheelchair?
“They didn’t want to bother you,” she said.
“We just want to say thank you.”
The waitress laughed. “That’s what they wanted me to tell you.”
I don’t know how to describe it. It was like… I was standing in the rain, and a stranger came up and gave me an umbrella, then walked away without a word. Weeks later, I was still thinking about it. About how much small things can mean.
It made me realize that maybe I could do the world some good.
34.
Sometime that summer, Kevin mentioned that he would be out of town for a week at the Costco Annual Manager’s Conference in Seattle. “I’m gonna be there one year, Heavy Kevy,” I joked. “I’m gonna take your job.”
Kevin looked at me. “No,” he said. “You’re going this year, Jeff. I’m going to take you, if you really want to go.”
“No, no,” I said. “I can’t…”
But he was serious, and a few days later, he had tickets for Erin and me. He wanted me to meet the people who had been rooting for me and supporting me. And he wanted them to meet me. He was proud of me, I guess. Not for what I’d been through, but for who I was.
The plane flight proved easier than anticipated. I wore my legs, and except for an excessively intimate fifteen-minute pat-down at airport security, I moved through the airport like anyone else. This was the longest trip I’d been on since I went to Paris and Normandy with my high school friends Pete and Jae when I was twenty-three years old. I had never been this far from Boston with Erin. I was looking forward to getting away. Once we were out of Boston, I could walk down the street without being recognized.
We went for a special dinner the first night with my fellow amputees Byron and Will, along with some of my biggest supporters, like the Costco media buyer, Pennie Clark Ianniciello, who had been sending me care packages since my first week in the hospital. In fact, she was still sending care packages for the people on the fifth floor at Spaulding, even though I was no longer staying there.
Pennie wanted to know everything, so I told her about rehab, Erin, the city of Boston. I told her I was considering writing a book. I was thinking of calling it Stronger, because it would be about how the bombing didn’t stop me, but made me love my life more.
She encouraged me to do it. “That’s the kind of story we want to support,” she told me. “An ass-kicker.” Pennie was hilarious. We had dinner together three or four times, and I can’t even begin to tell you the stories she laid on us, because they’d probably get the book banned from her stores.
After the dinner, we went to Kerry Park for the view, and then the Ferris wheel below Pike Place Market for a sunset ride. Most people went home after the Ferris wheel, but Will and his wife came back to the hotel with us. He brought his guitar, and we jammed for hours.
The next day, I went to corporate headquarters to meet the new CEO, Craig Jelinek, and the former CEO, Jim Sinegal, who was still on the board of directors. Mr. Sinegal had founded and built one of the largest companies in the United States, but his office looked like it belonged to an accountant. Instead of a desk, he had two folding tables, and they were full of papers. The only decoration was an enormous corkboard full of pictures of employees. He had a famous green pen; everyone at Costco talked about getting “green ink,” which meant Mr. Sinegal had signed on. For years, he had checked on and approved everything from the mix of candy in the five-pound bags to my top-notch health insurance.
And he was always right.
That night, Mr. Sinegal invited Erin, Byron, and me to sit at the head table with him for the big company dinner. His wife was there, too. They were the nicest people. You would never guess they were worth, like, a hundred million dollars. Mr. Jelinek introduced Byron and me, and he talked about our special bond. Someone later told me Byron hadn’t been wearing his legs to work but had started wearing them again after meeting me. We had inspired each other.
The next day, Kevin and his partner took Erin and me on a tour of the city. Kevin had grown up in Washington State, so we met his family, and his sister took us out in her boat so we could view the city from the water. There was
a company party at Safeco Field—Huey Lewis and the News! Surprisingly good!—and everyone with legs danced. Everyone at Costco was extraordinary. Everyone. It was an honor to be able to thank them in person, because they had done so much for Erin and me.
But there was one other person I was just as eager to meet.
In July, Erin had showed me her new copy of Runner’s World magazine. Inside was a picture of a man with no shirt, balanced only on his arms. He was strong. That’s the second thing you noticed. The first was that he had no legs. The full-page facing headline said: “Andre Kajlich Is Tougher Than You (He Might Be Happier, Too).”
I read the story immediately. When Andre was twenty-four years old, he was hit by a subway train while attending college in Czechoslovakia. He lost one leg above the knee. He lost his other leg above the hip. These are devastating injuries. Two artificial joints in a leg is hard; three is nearly impossible. But Andre was determined. He not only learned to walk on his hands, he learned to walk on his artificial legs. He got a job at a university and spent his summers working at a camp for teenagers who had lost limbs. He began competing in paratriathlons and was the 2012 Paratriathlete of the Year. The article had been written just after he’d completed the Brazil 135, a 135-mile, three-day ultramarathon, in his wheelchair.
“I want to meet Andre,” I told Erin, as soon as Kevin mentioned the trip. Andre was from Edmonds, Washington, but he lived in Seattle. Erin e-mailed Runner’s World, and to our amazement, Andre e-mailed back. He wanted to meet me, too. So that was what I was thinking as the plane touched down: I’m going to meet Andre Kajlich. Andre is tougher than you.
And happier, too.
We met Andre for dinner one night: Erin, Byron, Pennie, Kevin, and me. He came by himself. That’s the first thing I noticed. You could see his artificial legs, but he didn’t seem to notice them. To Andre, they were no big deal.