Boston Marathon bombing survivor has words of hope

BOSTON — It is eerie how much history can repeat itself.

It was seven years ago today the Boston Marathon was bombed, an act that plunged our community into a time of darkness.

And now, the coronavirus crisis has us all living in another dark time of anxiety and fear.

The situation is different, a terror attack in 2013, a worldwide pandemic today.

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But the feelings are the same.

On Wednesday, I spoke with Boston Marathon Bombing Survivor Marc Fucarile.

The second Marathon bomb nearly killed him, as he stood on Boylston Street.

The attack cost him his leg, his job, his marriage, but it is not keeping him down.

“My life really started over today, seven years ago,” Fucarile told me.

If anyone had the right to shut himself off from the world, it is Marc Fucarile and the other survivors of that awful attack.

Instead, Marc has devoted the last seven years to rebuilding himself, and fighting back against the act of hate waged against all of us on April 15, 2013.

“You can stay in one spot and focus on the past,” Marc said. “You can never change the past, no matter how much you focus on it. So, I strongly believe you chose to live in the moment you are in. Right now. At this minute. And that’s the only thing you can control.”

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Over the last seven years, as Marc worked on regaining his strength and his health, he threw himself into helping those are mobile challenged.

He has volunteered his time at summer camps, he has competed in the Boston Marathon on his hand bike.

Today he is dreaming big, making plans to start a TV channel dedicated to the mobile impaired.

And, Marc has again found love.

Indeed, Marc Fucarile is an inspiration for all of us living through this Coronavirus Age, anxious about our own health, our loved ones, and our jobs.

“Everybody just be patient, I know it’s hard. Everybody’s struggling, everybody’s afraid, but things do get better. You have to focus at that light at the end of the tunnel,” Marc told me.

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