Monday, April 15th. It was about 2 pm. My mother and I entered the overcrowded T car and looked around. Seeing that there were no seats available, we walked through to a less crowded area and stood, waiting for it to depart. A man noticeably older than my mother watched us take our positions, and without thinking twice, offered my mother his seat. My mother didn’t take it, teasing him that she hoped she didn’t look “that old”, but the two struck up a conversation, and we talked to him for the greater part of the 45 minute or so ride back to the city. Though we didn’t talk about much of anything important, in those 45 minutes, I determined that I liked him. He was one of those people that you cannot help but hope to meet again if even in passing, because he brightens up the room, or in our case, the T car.

   The man was wearing the blue and yellow that we were now so accustomed to seeing. He was in town for the Boston Marathon. He was not a runner but a supporter, and he was hoping to meet his wife at the finish line. Looking around, most of the people in the car were also sporting the celebratory blue and yellow. Mothers, sisters, children, husbands, friends of athletes. My mom and I had the day wide open. We planned on going to see the race from the finish line, but in the end decided against it, opting instead to go shopping near Faneuil Hall. After 18 stops and what seemed like endless poking from a little boy in a stroller, we reached Copley Station. The man waved and said goodbye, and the car cleared out. They headed to the finish line. We did not.

   It is moments like these that make us stop and think twice about our lives. It is moments like these that push us to ask ourselves the hard questions, the ones we never want to think about. Am I living my life the way I want to? Am I satisfied with my life? If I had exited at Copley Station that day, could I have honestly said I had lived my life to the fullest? It is moments like these that also remind us we are no longer in the safe and sheltered world we once knew as a child where everything was black and white and bad things only happened to bad people.

   But we will soon come to realize, or maybe for some we already have, that it is these moments that these last four years have prepared us for. Not in the sense that we will all become heroes and save our country from disaster, but in the sense that high school has prepared us to be aware, aware of our self, our community, and our country, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And through this awareness, our high school years have allowed us the opportunity to become productive members of a greater community, an even larger and tighter knit family than that of Cardinal Newman so that when we stumble upon these moments, or when they crash into us at full speed, we are prepared to come together as one.

   For it is our science teachers who have taught us how our world works and how to work alongside nature rather than against it. It is our math teachers, from which we have learned how to pick up the pieces and rebuild an even better and stronger community. It is our language teachers who have demonstrated that in order for cohesiveness, barriers must be broken, and communication is necessary. It is our religion teachers who have shown us that we are never alone in the toughest of times, and we cannot give up hope. It is our history teachers who have urged us to look towards a better future, live in the present, yet never let our past mistakes go unlearned from. And it is our English teachers who have allowed us to question the world around us and to come to the realization that such suffering and tragedy are pointless unless we make meaning of them.

   But most of all, Class of 2013, it’s us. Over the last four years, we have laughed together amongst water balloon fights and male pageant shows. We have shed tears together over AP US History finals and failed tests and all nighters due to procrastination. We have breathed sighs of relief together as we walked into the classroom and saw a sub or found out our AP Bio quiz was postponed. We have suffered together as we experienced our own forms of loss and tragedy in our Cardinal Newman and previous Ursuline community. But at last, we smile together, as we look back on the last four years and see how far we have come. For somehow over these past four years, without meaning to, we have accidentally formed the perfect class, the perfect community, the perfect family. And this is what has truly prepared us for those moments. Because no matter what our future holds, there is no escaping the fact that we have formed irrevocable bonds that will carry us through the next stages of our lives, through our accomplishments, through our struggles, amidst joy, and amidst tragedy. We are united. Congratulations Class of 2013. We did it. Almost.