Another Variety of Terrorism

The Boston Herald

This is what I have learned since Sept. 11: Armageddon is personal. A terrorist doesn't have to kill you for you to be dead. Bombs and smallpox and anthrax and toxins are the headliners. But in the small print on the back pages where most of us live our lives, and often in no print at all but in the whispers and tears of family and friends, there are countless private tragedies that deal as deadly a blow.

Andy Malacaria died a year ago of a disease that ambushed him in the middle of his good and happy life. He was only 27. We look to the sky, to bridges, to theme parks and shopping malls and big, overt symbols of America in anticipation of annihilation. But most times death and its precursors sneak in with little warning and without a sound.

Darren Gallup was driving home last weekend. He was a mile away. His father had just talked to him. Then the 18-year-old Harvard bound football star hit a patch of ice.

Every death is personal and every death a tragedy. When the doorbell rings in the middle of the day or night; when the doctor gives the diagnosis; when the worst comes unexpectedly or inevitably, it doesn't matter that the whole rest of the world isn't collapsing.Because for each of us there are people we love who are the whole world.

Jose Feliciano, 19, was changing a tire on the Massachusetts Turnpike last week when he was run down and killed. He was a National Guardsman scheduled to be deployed at the end of this month. You worry when you send your boy off to war. But you don't worry when he grabs the car keys and heads down a familiar road.

A young police officer and father of two just got diagnosed with a degenerative muscle disease. There's no running away from this, no safe place to go. Duct tape and plastic and radiation pills and three days worth of water won't do him any good. The government can't save him.  

Donald Edmonston had a stroke three years ago. It was a bad one that's been complicated by seizures. He lives in a nursing home now because he's paralyzed on one side and can't speak real words.

It isn't only bombs that wreck lives.

I think about the Murphys burying their two babies, Cianan when he was 11 months old and Cecilia at 14 months. Both had Spinal Muscular Atrophy. And about little Frankie Clerico, who had diseases that puzzled doctors and about a young mother who turned her small living room into a bedroom to take care of her dying daughter, Leanne.

The news is projection, full of when and where and what if and what then. The air we breathe is thick with fear as the terror alert remains high and the government itself acts scared. Get ready, our leaders say. But ready for what? When there's wind, you brace yourself. When there's snow, you wear boots. When there's rain, you carry an umbrella. But when there's imminent danger and you don't know what it is, what are you supposed to do? 

This may be the quiet before the storm. Or it may not be. The storm might pass. Or it might come when we're least expecting it.

But isn't this, really, what all of life is?

We are mortal. The people we love are mortal. We are not here on this Earth forever. We are not even guaranteed this day. 

Two months before Andy Malacaria died he wrote, "If there is one thing I learned from these past two years it's that we've got to live every day to the fullest.”

He lived those two years under a different kind of terrorist threat. But he lived them. He didn't worry them away.