Looking back at my life before “the incident” I realize how lucky I once was. When my mom became disabled my entire life got turned upside down. She wakes up the same way everyday, there are no such thing as good days or bad days, the pain never goes away. There will always be apart of her missing. This is the story of the day that changed my life. The day that made me grow up. The day I lost the mom I once knew, forever.

April 15th 2013. Everything about this day will forever be cemented in my head. The clothes I was wearing. The smell of the coffee shop that day on Main Street. Claire, who rang up my order, Mrs. Curtis, from down the street, who held the door open for me when I walked in. The worst part, and the most vivid memory of that day, is the young boy who burst in at around 3 o’clock,

“There’s been a bomb at the Boston Marathon!!” he yelled to his mom sitting at table 8.

The one thing I don’t remember is how I suddenly lost all my fine motor skills and dropped my scalding hot coffee on the ground. And by my coffee I mean my $6.50 caramel mocachino frapachino whatever that place calls its overpriced beverages. I stood there frozen in place. Everyone turned and looked at me as if I had grown 17 heads. I couldn’t believe what I had heard. A bomb? In Boston? At the marathon? Is he sure it wasn’t in New York? Not to be mean or anything but most catastrophic events do usually take place there.

My face turned white and I quickly sat down. Normally I do not keep up with this breaking news. I couldn’t tell you where I was during 9/11, during Hurricane Sandy I’m pretty sure I went out to pick up groceries when I realized the Safeway looked like it had been ransacked. I am the type of person who pays more attention to the lives of the Kardashian’s than I do current events.

But this was different. This was Boston. This was THE Boston Marathon. This was the race MY mother had been going off about for months. This was the year she had finally worked up the courage to run a real marathon, not any of that “Nantucket Half Marathon/Marathon” business that she took part in every summer. This was the real deal. This was also the year 2 bombs had gone off 210 yards away from the finish line.

When my breathing had turned back to normal I was able to check my phone for the first time. It was around 3:30 PM. My heart sank. Every part of my body had gone numb again. Then came the tears, oh, those uncontrollable tears. The scariest part is I am not the type of person to get emotional either. I am that girl that didn’t cry in Marley in Me, not even Soldier and Family reunions get me to tear up. Some sixth sense inside of me knew something was different though, little did I know how different it really was.

By that point, I was dry heaving sitting at table 7 (the one the snotty girls always seemed to be glued to) with half the population of our small town surrounding me trying to calm me down. But, at this point, I didn’t realize I was sitting where no other girl like me had ever been granted access. I was too busy freaking out. Mr. Shields, the owner, who also happened to be my dad’s best friend, had taken my phone and dialed her number. Straight to voicemail. Again. And again. And again. I, of course did not realize how many times she called until I checked my phone and saw 17 outgoing calls made, not one of them had been answered. That’s when the panic had set in all around me.

As he was beginning to dial again, the phone itself rang. I instantly recognized the ringtone as my dad’s and snatched the phone from his hand. Normally, I would have never done that. This man is one of the few people that scares the crap out of me. He has the type of personality that makes you feel like a speck of sand. I always thought he had way too much energy and quite honestly it freaked me out.

“Dad?!?!?” I yelled into the phone, “Have you heard anything from mom yet? Did she finish? Is she okay? She won’t pick up! Hello? Are you there??”. I was talking a million miles a minute, disregarding the fact that I gave him absolutely no time to answer each question before firing off a new one.

“Abby.....calm down please. Is your sister there with you?”

“What? No? Dad, seriously, can you please tell me what’s going on,” I answered back. His unwillingness to respond to my multitude of questions was a pretty clear indicator I wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

“Well,” he started to say, “I’m guessing you heard about the bombings. There’s no news yet on who put them there or why.”

“Are you kidding me? I could care less about the a******s that blew the place up, personally, I am more concerned about the well being of my mother,” I fired back.

“All I know is that she was pretty close to the finish and she did get injured. I’m not sure how badly yet, I’m working on getting more information from Aunt Teresa. She called me on the way to the hospital,” he calmly told me.

I’m guessing he wasn’t trying to alarm me. But the words injured and hospital really caught me off guard. I could sense something was wrong from the minute the boy delivered the news, I just never expected it to affect me so personally. He then proceeded to instruct me to pick up my sister from her lacrosse practice and wait for him to get home. I didn’t even question what he told me to do and ran out of the coffee shop.

I sped over to the high school, exceeding the speed limit by a good 20 mph, completely oblivious to my surroundings. I probably was not in the best mental state to be behind the wheel of a vehicle, but that definitely was not something that crossed my mind while a billion scenarios of things that could have happened played in my head.

I guess my dad got in touch with my sister since she was already standing on the curb waiting for me. My sister is typically the more dramatic one of the two of us so I had already prepared myself for the wailing and sobbing and freaking out I was going to have to endure all the way home. Instead, I was greeted by a stone faced fifteen year old who didn’t even say as much as hi to me. Completely taken aback we rode the rest of the way in silence. It wasn’t that super uncomfortable “I feel like I should say something” silence though, it was a nice peaceful ride home. Each one of us thinking about what awaited us at home.

My dad’s car was already there as we pulled into the driveway, along with my grandmother’s, a clear indicator she would be staying with us. We left everything in the car and sprinted inside. When we got inside we could hear the sound of the news from the family room, and saw my Grammy and father plastered to the TV, barely looking up as me and my sister walked in.

“Have you guys heard anything,” I asked as soon as we walked in, plopping myself down on the couch to see what more information they had gathered.

I was instantly shushed as everyone around me sat mesmerized by the television. That’s when I saw the video. The video of my mother...on national television. Not the good kind of national television either, like “I want to be in the background of Al Roker on the Today Show national television”, it was CNN breaking news type stuff. So there she was coming into the final stretch, this was footage from the finish line camera might I add, when you see a bright blast and the camera begins to shake. Then, mayhem ensues. There are people on the ground, falling left and right, one of them being my mother.

It looks like a movie, or maybe a dream, I’m not sure how to describe it except that it doesn’t seem anything like real life. The video plays over and over again in slow motion. My mom falling to the ground, grabbing her legs, there is no sound but I can imagine the obvious scream she let out. Then, my aunt (her sister who lives in Boston) runs out from the crowd and to her side. Thankfully there are ambulances standing by in case someone passes out from the race and volunteers rush her off the screen and I assume into a waiting one.

I can’t look anymore. Seeing my mom in such pain, and watching the clip play over and over again makes me sick to my stomach. I wish I could be there by her side like I know she’d be for me, but judging from the suitcases I saw when I walked in, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. After an hour of watching the same reel of videos played over and over again, we turned the TV off and tried to have a somewhat normal dinner, which turned into everyone grabbing some form of salty snack from the pantry.

My dad spoke to my aunt, who informed him that my mom was under going surgery. Apparently she had been pretty close to the blast since her leg was severely impacted by the explosion.

“It could just be a broken leg,” my dad kept telling saying over and over again. My sister and I knew it was much worse though, we watched it happen with our own eyes, plus, she wouldn’t have been been in surgery for so long if it was a mere broken bone. It was decided he would drive into the city tomorrow to be in the hospital with her. My aunt told of how all the hospitals were so overcrowded, she said it was complete chaos. The worst part is that there was still no word on who did it.

The next 48 hours all seemed like a blur. I don’t remember sleeping all that much. Just curling up on the couch, having the news on in the background, and dozing off every now and again. My grandmother attempted to keep our spirits up, continuously asking us if we wanted food, except this ended up backfiring since it got pretty annoying when I got asked if I’m hungry a few times every 15 minutes. Early the next morning, we found out my mothers leg had to be amputated. Amputated as in completely chopped off, as in, she would never be able to run without the help of a prosthetic leg and a lot of physical therapy, ever again.

My dad later told me she screamed when she reached down and she felt there was nothing there, but never once has she ever talked about it. We refer to April 15th 2013 as “the incident” and nothing more. She has never said anything about that day and I doubt she ever will. She no longer likes to run and has no motivation to try walking with her prosthetic leg. The lively, outgoing, confident mother I grew up with is gone forever. She is now wheelchair bound and relies heavily on me and my sister. One instant changed our lives forever and forced us to grow up faster than we ever thought we had to. Sometimes, it makes me angry that she just had to be there at that time and couldn’t have run faster, or slower. I know my anger is misguided, but it can’t be that invalid. I was robbed of a senior summer which was instead spent by my mother’s side reading to her expressionless face, not knowing what she was thinking or how much pain she felt.

Now, 17 years later, as I look back on it, I’m grateful for what she taught me. She taught me how I don’t want to be. I was forced to grow up, yes, but I also saw how much she let “the incident” define her. She let her disability take over and ruin her life, instead of adapting her life to live with it. I saw how she let one bad day ruin all the good ones, and now, as I run in the Boston Marathon myself, I vow to never do the same.