A heart birthday and marathon tragedy

Today is April 17, two days after the devastating bombings at the Boston marathon. It also marks six months and three days since my friend Marisa died. Perhaps most significantly, it is 11 years since my friend Marisa was given the gift of life, a heart transplant which enabled her to live an extra 10 1/2 years.

I knew Sunday that this week would be difficult. Sunday was the six month anniversary of Marisa's death, and with her heart birthday approaching on Wednesday and the marathon on Monday, I could not stop thinking of her.

You see, Marisa's heart and the marathon are very much connected. Her heart came from a marathon runner, Dr. Cynthia Lucero, who passed away after collapsing during the 2002 Boston Marathon. Dr. Lucero died from overhydration, but as an organ donor, she would live on through complete strangers who, thanks to Dr. Lucero's selfless choice, received a second chance at life. She lived on for 10 1/2 years through Marisa.

I was nearly 12 when Marisa received her heart transplant. She was one of my closest friends, and for a while before the transplant, she was hospitalized and very, very sick. I missed her in school, in art class and on weekend nights, when our whole group of friends would go to the movies or have sleepovers.

Marisa was always the life of the party. It was so quiet without her around. She was loud and adventurous, always up for anything and always smiling or laughing or dishing out the latest in 12-year-old gossip. It was hard to believe that that Marisa was the same person as the pale, tired girl in the hospital who fought even just to breathe. Marisa had a heart condition her entire life, but from the way she normally acted, you would never know it. That April, Marisa could not put up a front anymore. I don't think I realized at the time how precarious her situation was. I just assumed she would get her heart and everything would go back to normal. As a 12-year-old, I had no idea that many people die waiting for the organ that will save his or her life.

But Marisa was one of the lucky ones, and after she received her heart, she recovered and got back to living life as normal. The only difference from my point of view was that she now had two birthdays. I was thrilled by this. Marisa's actual birthday is July 4, and I always missed her birthday because I went to overnight camp during the summer. Now, she had a birthday that I could be home to celebrate with her.

I started making Marisa heart birthday cards yearly. After Marisa's death in October, her sister found one of those cards still taped to her wall (Marisa was a bit of a pack rat). I now sleep with that card and a framed picture of Marisa on the nightstand next to my bed. I stopped making those cards for Marisa once we went to college, and we drifted apart the way hometown friends often do when they go away to college. She went to Edinboro in western Pennsylvania while I went to BU. Because I was in the heart of Boston, I celebrated Marisa's heart birthday in conjunction with the marathon every year.

BU is situated right on the marathon route, and each year, tons of students head down to Beacon street, Kenmore Square or Copley to cheer on the runners. I went to the marathon with my friends through college, and every year I would be sure to tell anyone I talked to about the marathon and how a marathon runner saved my friend Marisa's life, how she was finally able to lead a normal life because of her transplant.

But last February, that normal life ended when Marisa developed post-transplant lymphoma. The treatment for it weakened her transplanted heart, and while on vacation with her family in Cape Cod in September, Marisa got very sick. She was medflighted to Brigham & Women's in Boston where she went into cardiac arrest and was without a heart beat for 40 minutes. Marisa somehow pulled through that night - she was a true fighter - but two weeks later, after progressing all the way to a step-down unit, Marisa suffered a second heart attack. This time she was without a heart beat for 25 minutes. Marisa survived the heart attack initially, but too much damage had been done to her weakened heart. She passed away a week after the second heart attack.

While Marisa was in the hospital in September and October, the doctors and nurses marveled over the fact that this was the patient with Cynthia Lucero's heart. They remembered Dr. Lucero even though she had passed away over 10 years before because she was the marathon runner that passed away. In the years after her transplant, Marisa volunteered at the marathon as a way of giving back to the woman and hospitals who saved her life. There would always be a connection between Marisa and the marathon because of Dr. Lucero.

And so I knew Monday, the first marathon since Marisa's death, was always going to be difficult for me. I was supposed to be working from 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. and then I was supposed to go to an event at Forum (exactly where the second bomb went off) for the Joe Andruzzi Foundation with one of the writers from the website I work for. I was hoping that staying busy during the marathon would keep the sadness of Marisa's death away and allow me to appreciate the day and what it did for Marisa all those years ago.

I wanted Marathon Monday to be a happy day, a day of celebrating the extra 10 years Marisa was gifted with, a day to honor Marisa's memory. One of my friends was stationed at the finish line during the day, and I asked her to hold up a sign with Marisa and Dr. Lucero's names on it as a way of keeping their memories alive at the marathon.

Two hours after my friend took a photo of the sign, the bombs blew up right near where she had been standing. Luckily, she had left the area quite a bit before the bombings. Suddenly, a day I was struggling with became a day of horror and tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people.

I can't make sense yet of Monday's bombings and the marathon and Marisa and the way all three are interconnected. I can't stop asking myself, what if I had gone to that event a few hours earlier? What if my friend hadn't left the finish line?

Today, on Marisa's 11th heart birthday, I'm still trying to recover from Monday while also trying to figure out how to spend this day. Do you celebrate a heart birthday after someone's heart has stopped beating? Do you celebrate anything just days removed from a terrorist attack that killed and maimed ordinary civilians? Do you celebrate when SWAT trucks and the national guard occupy your streets?

I don't know the answers to any of those questions. All I know is that I don't feel much like celebrating anything.

Remembering Newtown through Noah

Almost a month ago, this entire nation was hit hard by the Newtown school shootings. Among the dead were 20 first-graders, six staff members and the shooter's mother. The idea of so many innocent lives taken far too soon is devastating, and it hits me very hard. I'm not sure if it is because I've lost two friends who should have had many years left to live (my friend Scott passed away when he was 18 and my friend Marisa passed away nearly three months ago at age 22, but neither were murdered or died a violent death) or if it's just because I'm human, but I can't stop thinking about the innocent victims of this shooting.

On Twitter, I've seen a few people suggest a "One Name" initiative in which people try to remember the name of at least one victim for the rest of their life. Too many people remember the shooter's name in these type of tragedies while the victims' names end up forgotten.

So, as my New Year's resolution, I decided to join in on remembering one name of a victim. The victim I chose is six-year-old Noah Pozner.

Photo from www.farine-mc.com

Noah Samuel Pozner was the youngest victim of the shootings. He celebrated his sixth birthday on Nov. 20, just 24 days before he was murdered. Noah was shot 11 times, and according to gruesome details from The Jewish Daily Forward, Noah's mouth and left hand were completely destroyed by the gunfire.

But Noah was more than just a victim of a horrific crime, and it was because of his life and not the way that he died that I chose to remember Noah.

Noah has a twin sister whose name is Arielle, just like me. I have two older brothers (as mentioned frequently on this blog), and people have always thought my brother Ben and I are twins. We are two years apart, but I can see why people sometimes think we're twins.

When we were younger, we never allowed anyone to separate us. At day camp, we pretended to be the same age so we could be in the same camp groups, and in ski school, we did the same thing. To this day, Ben and I will do things people often attribute to some kind of twin ESP: we will show up somewhere without having seen each other beforehand wearing matching clothes (or the same color scheme). We order the same food at restaurants without talking to each other beforehand, text each other the same thing at the same time without knowing the other has sent the text message and so on. A few times, while we've been in different states, we've even gotten sick with the exact same illness at the exact same time. My parents call us "Frick and Frack". We don't know which one is which, so the nickname is more like a joint name for us.

Ben is one of my very best friends, and I can't imagine not having him around. By all accounts, Arielle and Noah were best friends just like Ben and I are. I talk to Ben every day, and I know no matter where we are, I can always call him about anything. A part of me hurts for Arielle Pozner knowing that she will no longer be able to have this type of relationship with her brother.

Based on the photos, Noah was a beautiful little boy with big, twinkling blue eyes and a cowlick on the right side of his forehead that seemed to represent his mischievous streak. Noah grew up in a big family. He had three older siblings aside from twin Arielle: Danielle, Michael and Sophia. By all accounts from his family, Noah was full of personality and love. According to his uncle, Noah was already a great reader, something in which I also excelled at a young age. Noah was a playful little boy who struggled to stay still and enjoyed pulling pranks. He had dreams of being all kinds of things when he grew up: a doctor, soldier or taco factory manager. According to his sister, Danielle, Noah could be quite stubborn, and he always marched to the beat of his own drum.

Noah's grandmother asked in a post to remember her grandson as an "impish little rascal", not a victim. So that is how I will remember Noah from now on -- as a little boy who loved life and crammed as much fun as he could into his short time here on this earth no matter the punishment. I'll remember him as a brother, a son, a nephew, a grandson, a cousin.

And I will remember his name. Always.

Noah Pozner. Forever six years old. 


If you wish to learn more about Noah, check out his grandmother's blog. Since he loved tacos, this website has been created where people can create tacos in memory of Noah. Lastly, if you wish to donate, the family has set up this website where you can make a contribution that will go toward counseling services, education and basic needs for Noah's four siblings.