Bits feed through you slowly. You are hearing bits and pieces as they are happening – slower even because you’re a member of the public and not personally involved. There is only so much you can process, even then.
The words, “Oh my God, there were two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon,” are not what you expect to interrupt your work day.
How do you even begin to describe that feeling? The twin towers and the pentagon were one thing – a place I had been to but never really thought about. The aftermath of that was understandable. The loss was tremendous then.
Boston, though? I grew up in and around the city. I’ve been to the Boston Public Library. I know Boylston Street. I still have family and friends in and around the area.
It’s hard to really write reflectively on something that just happened six hours ago. But that is the important part. Remembering what exactly you were thinking – because even three minutes later, your impression is changing. The situation is fluid. Your impressions are fluid.
Hearing my boss’ exclamation and seeing the CNN news story pop up on her phone – I just froze. We had a customer in the store at the time. The two of them were talking, and my brain was frozen. “What?” That couldn’t be possible. There was no way. And then in the midst of it another customer came in, and she repeated the same thing: “There’s been two explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.”
It took me a bit to fully remember that my parents no longer living in the Boston area. After that, all my brain could do was run down the list of people I know who live in and around the Boston area. Most of them posted on Facebook immediately, so I knew they were alright. Others trickled in. Some (mostly people who don’t regularly use the networking site) still have not posted anything, and I have no idea if they’re alright. I can only hope and pray.
And I am four hours away and helpless.
Even if I were right there, I couldn’t do anything. There’s already so much being done that I’d merely be in the way. And I know that. It’s a truly awful feeling.
So I’ve done the only thing I can do. I’ve put requests up on Facebook for people in the area to find some way to let us all know that they’re okay – whether it be through Facebook or Google People Finder or the Red Cross Safe and Well page. I’ve also put up the Google People Finder widget on my homepage here, in case other people are having difficulty getting to it.
And now I can only continue to hope and pray, and know that all the authorities down in Boston have trained for this. They have performed spectacularly and are continuing to do so. And hopefully, come tomorrow and the next day, we will find the individual(s) responsible.
There is never an excuse to take human life – not like this. Not in this way. Certainly not in anyway, but absolutely never like this. We fought for our freedoms 238 years ago at Lexington and Concord. No one should be attempting to make a mockery of that in the birthplace of the revolution over 200 years later, because we shall not be mocked. We rose to the occasion, and we are united by it.
But we should not have had to.