"Love That Dirty Water"

Oh, Boston, you’re my home.  Patriots’ Day is normally the best day of the year to be a Bostonian — it’s a special state holiday to celebrate the revolutionary battles of Lexington and Concord.  It’s also the beginning of spring after a long cold winter, the start of spring break, and day of the ultra-elite Boston Marathon with throngs of cheering people lining the streets for 26.2 miles.  And on Monday it was no exception.  It was a fabulous day until about 2:50 PM when two bombs brought horror and carnage to many people, including children.

So where were you when you heard the horrific news?  It was just a regular day for me, how lucky I was.  I was picking up Sam from school to go to tae kwondo, when a friend mentioned there had been bombings at the Boston Marathon and it was all over the news.  Immediately I got the chills, finding it impossible to digest.   Now way!  The Marathon?  Really?

Unfortunately for the large amount of people injured and killed in Boston as well as their friends and family, it turned out to be anything but a regular day.  Most will never have a “regular day” again.  Their lives are forever changed — or completely snuffed out forever.  It is sickening to the soul to hear about people having their legs blown off (among other things) right in front of Boston Public Library, one of the most beautiful and historic buildings in the city.

Even as someone who loves to write, I am at a loss for words.  I think we are all struggling with the same sense of despair at such abhorrent and vicious cruelty.  Who would do such a thing to their fellow man — and WHY?  How could anyone possibly rationalize this act as justified or, God forbid, appropriate?  Let’s go bomb the Boston Marathon — what a GREAT IDEA!  And let’s make sure to include lots of ball bearing and nails to cause optimal carnage.  WHO DOES THAT?  Hopefully we will soon find out, not that anything will ever make it better.  The horrific damage has been done, and the repercussions have only begun to reverberate through all of our lives.

It is really sad that we have gotten to this point, that we have so many tragic dates burned into our brains.  Where were you when you heard about Newtown last December?  I remember seeing something about it on the internet not long after it happened, when details were scarce.  Then later on that day, I read a friend’s Facebook post about how hard it would be to go read to her daughter’s first grade class that afternoon.  Then I looked at the news.   Wow — an entire first grade class was gunned down along with their brave teachers and beloved principal.  SICK!

And it goes on.  Do you remember where you were when the news of the Colorado theatre massacre broke?  For me it was in the morning newspaper.  How about the mass murders in Sweden?  The internet.  Oh, and Virginia Tech living nightmare?  I was in a toddler play area in the MacArthur Center in Norfolk.  And of course September 11, the worst of the worst?  I was at work gearing up for the day.  We all walked around like zombies for a while.  Finally we all went home, realizing that we were incapable of doing anything productive.  Work was pretty irrelevant at that point.

We can’t give into the terror or the terrorists have won.  We’ve got to believe that there is more good than evil in this world.  We’ve got to be part of that force of goodness.