Meeting terror with calm resolve
To live in this city and watch the horror that took place on Westminster Bridge in London yesterday was to feel the pangs of Boylston Street on April 15, 2013.
All those London cops wearing the same fluorescent jackets down on their knees, trying to stop the bleeding and save the lives of people who were doing nothing more than walking across a legendary bridge leading to the Houses of Parliament.
Our police officers on Boylston did exactly the same thing four years ago.
Yesterday also marked the first anniversary of a terrorist strike at the Brussels airport that took the lives of 32 people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That seems terribly cold to say, but then there’s no other way to put it. Terrorism has become a fact of life. It hasn’t stopped us from making travel reservations, rushing to airports to make a flight or returning to Boylston Street to watch the marathon.
On the contrary, we continue to live our lives with resolve, to travel, to enjoy walking the streets of our city, understanding that the shadow of terror has indeed become a sad part of life in the 21st century, but not one that has to suffocate us.
No doubt we will soon learn more about the terrorist who turned his car into a weapon, injuring 40 and killing at least four, including a police officer.
Before this man met his own death at the hands of police, his path of destruction was eerily similar to the trailer truck attack on a Christmas bazaar in Berlin last December that claimed 12 lives, and the truck massacre in Nice, France, last July that killed 84 people in the heart of the French Riviera.
Last night, British Prime Minister Theresa May answered this latest cowardly act of terrorism with a resolve worthy of Winston Churchill.
“Tomorrow morning,” May said, “Parliament will meet as normal. We will come together as normal.
“And Londoners — and others from around the world who have come to visit this great city — will get up and go about their day as normal. They will board their trains. They will leave their hotels. They will walk these streets. They will live their lives.
“And we will all move forward together. Never giving in to terror. Never allowing the voices of hate and evil to drive us apart.”
Tom Menino, Barack Obama and Deval Patrick said much the same thing as investigators crawled on their hands and knees along Boylston, assembling the pieces of a nightmare.
There are no guarantees against what happened on Westminster Bridge yesterday, or Boylston Street four years ago, no walls high enough to block it out.
Ultimately, there is only our determination to try to live our lives unafraid.