I was in Back Bay yesterday. Coincidentally, I was there during the precise moment that the jury was giving its verdict in the Marathon Bombing trial.
As I drove around, and then walked around, I was struck by how ordinary everything was. There goes a known VC walking by, speaking quickly and loudly into a cell phone. There go the college students and office workers walking on Boylston St., where the bombs went off.
The memorials are gone now (one is above). The sidewalks long ago scrubbed clean. The damages to buildings completely removed.
As I’ve written before, two years ago was an odd time. One of my children and I were at Fenway just a bit before the bombs went off. Our neighborhood was shut down as the manhunt began, and the suspect was found just a few miles away from our house.
It was just a surreal time to walk on Boylston St. I wonder how many pedestrians knew what was happening at the courthouse that very moment?
To me, the silence was deafening.