Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

Witness: Seen and Unseen

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I haven’t told you this: I almost certainly saw the arsonist that morning.

I qualify that because of my own sense of fair play. Our fire was not officially linked to the series of fires set in the summer and fall of 2010. Ours was the first and on a different side of town from the rest, but fit the m.o., exactly. I don’t know why ours was not tied to the others and haven’t had the energy to find out. I didn’t think it mattered as long as he was caught and convicted, but I found it did matter to me when he did not confess to ours.

I’m writing about it privately for now, but I’ll tell you this, he had already set our house on fire when he looked me right in the eye and asked a question. I was busy getting my children to safety and thought he was just a knucklehead, a random gawker. I was running from my burning house but couldn’t really believe it was on fire. I had no idea someone set it; I still can’t believe that.

After the bombings in Boston I read about Jeff Bauman, the young man who lost both his legs and is in the wheelchair in that infamous picture. When he woke up at the hospital he asked for a pen and paper and wrote, “Bag, saw the guy, looked right at me.” One of the backpacks had been dropped at his feet.

While still in the ICU, Bauman helped the FBI identify the suspects.

This week I have found myself thinking about him and wondering what must run through his mind, the image he remembers and how he must feel knowing this man looked right at him and still dropped the bag. It makes it so cold-blooded and strangely personal. I have been thinking about what we look at and do not realize we’re seeing.

I’ve also been thinking about Carlos Arrendondo, the man who helped save Jeff’s life. He’s the man in the cowboy hat in the the picture helping push the wheelchair and pinching shut the artery in Jeff’s right leg. He was in the bleachers near the finish line handing out flags and cheering on members of the National Guard and a suicide prevention group who were running in honor of his two deceased sons, one of whom died in Iraq in 2004. When the bomb went off he ran right towards it to help people and realized right away that Jeff needed him most.

This picture holds so much: violence, loss, terror, compassion, heroism, fearlessness and horror, and that’s only what’s visible.

Arrendondo visited Bauman in the hospital the other day and this is what he said, “The picture that you see, that’s what it is and that’s how it happened, you know, I was just trying to help him in every way I could, and thank God he gave me the opportunity to help this beautiful young man.”

For his part, Bauman has a great attitude and has told his family he’s going to walk again. I pray he will and that he never knows despair. This journey has just begun.

When something terrible happens there is that continuing sense of surreality, even if you have accepted what is and have mourned and healed. Time passes and this deep disbelief mingles with years of hard reality: the endless both and.

Each of us has our sorrows and losses, many of us carry memories of unutterable heartache. Jeff Bauman isn’t ready to walk just yet, his wounds need to heal. Too often we rush this and trauma, physical or mental, slows you down. When you are learning how to walk without legs, a good attitude isn’t everything, but it is so much.

I’ve been so ashamed by how long it has taken me to heal since the fire after starting so strong. It is what it is, though and today I can’t tell you what I should have/could have done differently. I’ll tell you though, Carlos Arrendondo’s behavior before and after the bombing pretty much personifies what I want to do going forward: while everything was peaceful he was handing out flags and cheering for others, but as soon as the bomb went off, he ran right for the wounded, found the person whose need was greatest, did what he could, and afterwards thanked God he had been able to help him.

Home and still moving

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 Photo: Tanner Wolfe

We’re back at the new house.

How strange it is to be back at something entirely new.

“Are you loving the house?”  We are asked a lot.  I actually worked out an answer with our therapist, because the short one for me: “No” leads to a really long one that most people wouldn’t want to hear and I don’t want to tell, over and over.

Most of the time I say, “We’re so thankful to be home”  circumventing the actual question and yet answering it succinctly and truly, which is important to me. And then I ask, “But how are you?”  It’s not all about us – this took me years to figure out – and I don’t want to forget it just because something extraordinary happened.  It’s so easy for me to go on and on.

Here is where I get to and I think I’m finally ready to tell you the rest.  As far as the story goes, I left us on the path watching our house burn.  To be honest, up until a few weeks ago, I was stuck there emotionally too.

You can deny or minimize trauma but that won’t heal it…so I’ve learned.

Thankfully we’re all moving forward and finding our way home.

9/27/08

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Had he lived, today would have been my father’s seventieth birthday.  Tomorrow my mother will be 68. When Dad was alive none of us kids could keep their birthdays straight.  Year after year Torey and I would (separately) call Mom and wish her a happy birthday, sometimes singing it to her in a stupid voice.  When we had finished, she would say laughing, “Oh Honey, thank you, but today is your dad’s birthday.”  Then we would call Dad.  Somehow we always forgot.  

Dad went into the hospital on April 2 and finally died on June 22.  Beside the door of his various rooms was posted his information: Wolfe, Donald R. DOB: 9/27/58.
September 27th.  I can’t tell you how many times I read that typed sheet.  In those days upon days that numbered his last on earth, I finally learned the date of his birth.  When it rolled around just three months after his death, I knew it was coming; I was marking it.  This irony was just another drop in the bitterness that was then my cup.  
We kids had never really made a big deal about our parents’ birthdays, following their lead.  We called, sometimes sent cards, occasionally bought a present and that was enough, but the first birthdays after his death, the burden of my mother’s aloneness fell heavily on me.  The 27th dawned and I called my mother and wished her a happy birthday. “Today is your dad’s birthday,” she said gently.  I told that I knew and then we both began to cry.   I have called her on the 27th and done something for her on her own birthday ever since.
This evening I realized that I forgot to call her, that I forgot today was his birthday at all. 
R.I.P. – Rest In Peace is often written as a fitting closing to a tribute or memory of one who is dead, but I don’t find it necessary.  I know he is at peace and I am glad to realize that I am too.