Yesterday, I was headed to the Boylston Street Apple Store.

That meant getting off at the Copley Green Line stop and walking where the horror and carnage of Boston Marathon bombings occurred.

It meant walking on a sidewalk that was once stained with blood. Past a spot where people died.

Every time I pass by there I can’t help but think of the bombings and their aftermath, of the shock and disbelief as word first reached the newsroom. Of going home that night and seeing a city on full alert, choppers hovering, police cars roaring by with lights on. Of the manhunt and of driving by Watertown on the highway and seeing the entire town lit up in a sea of red and blue police lights.

But Boylston is just a street now. On a lovely spring day people dine out on the sidewalk. On weekdays people are talking on cell phones and rushing to work or appointments. The area is humming with construction as a new high rise goes up and the Boston Public Library is renovated.

It all just seems so normal.

Earlier this year I visited the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. The museum is built on and around the footprints of the twin towers. The box beams still embedded in the concrete foundations of both buildings are part of the exhibits. Visitors literally walk through the very space where the buildings collapsed, where so many died.

It’s a singularly moving experience. But to be there is also discordant. I was sitting on a bench in the main gallery, a bench of dark, fine-grained walnut like one that can be found in almost any museum in the world. As on that street back in Boston, around me scenes of calm domesticity played out.

Bored teens. Parents with strollers. People snapping photos. In short, it’s not unlike any museum anywhere even though it’s hallowed ground unlike any other place.

I bring all this up in light of the Paris attacks and how easily the calm of the world can be turned to chaos and horror and then back to calm.

We mourn the victims, we honor them. But also life resets to its normal state. Basic simple goodness and decency wins out.

But we’ll always remember that something terrible happened here.