The debate over how to memorialize the Boston Marathon bombings has been subdued over the past year — probably because so many people are still grappling with physical and emotional trauma. But in the coming months, that discussion is going to intensify — and based on what I saw in Copley Square Monday, one option should be ruled out. I’m talking about the idea that the marathon itself could function as a sort of permanent, recurring memorial — with remembrance of the bombings folded into the broader celebration of the race each April.
Here’s why that won’t work: A fundamentally different spirit that animates the marathon on the one hand, and the need to remember last year’s attacks on the other. Watching the finishers on Boylston Street Monday drove home just how much the Boston Marathon is about vitality: Running it requires not just good health, but an absolute commitment to constant, forward-driving motion. In contrast, grappling with the marathon bombings will take stasis — a willingness to drop everything else and contemplate, with still bodies and still minds, the full magnitude of what took place in 2013.
This year, it made sense to fuse those two disparate impulses. From the city to the spectators to the runners themselves, it was necessary to show that the marathon and its participants could persevere. But this year’s race also showed how fundamental the tension between marathon and remembrance is. Yes, some finishers told me they’d been inspired to run by last year’s attacks; and yes, one woman told me that when her energy flagged, she drew on the memory of those attacks as motivational fuel. Despite all that, the marathon’s forward-looking spirit dominated the day. While there were plenty of “Boston Strong” t-shirts, explicit references to the people who lost their lives in 2013 were extremely hard to find. And at 2:49 this afternoon — the time in last year’s race when the first bomb went off — there was no discernible change in the collective mood in Copley Square.
That is a heartening development — but it also shows that when it comes to remembrance, the marathon alone isn’t enough. To honor the victims and the survivors, something unique is needed: a space apart where people can halt and contemplate a level of emotional and physical pain that most of us will be blessed never to experience. Maybe that should be in Copley Square; maybe it should be off the beaten path, in an area more suited to silent thought. But it needs to exist. And the marathon needs to go back to being what it’s always been: a celebration of strength and stamina where a new storyline gets written every year.
