It’s been two years since terrorists killed 130 people in coordinated attacks across Paris, but relatives of concert-goers slain at the Bataclan say their mourning is as overwhelming as ever.
“The notion of having grieved, I’m not sure it works when it comes to your son,” said François Giroud as he prepared to mark Monday’s second anniversary of his son’s death. “Every day is November 13.”
Matthieu Giroud was among 90 people killed at the popular Paris venue when ISIS-linked gunmenopened fire on the crowd during an Eagles of Death Metal gig.
The 38-year-old geography professor left behind his son Gary, aged 3, and his partner Aurélie, who was pregnant with their baby daughter at the time.
François Giroud, 71, told NBC News that his pain had not lessened. And it returns whenever he hears of a similar incident on European soil.
“For me in the Paris attacks, it was my son who got a Kalashnikov bullet in the head, so you see it’s very concrete,” he said. “Every time there is an attack I think of that … pain.”
Caroline Jolivet, whose husband Christophe Foultier was also killed at the concert agreed that time did not help.
“We have a very different perception of time. I feel exactly the same pain as two years ago, it doesn’t change even a bit,” she said.
Related: Tattoos Ease Pain for Bataclan Survivors
Jolivet, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, agreed that every new terrorist attack reopens old wounds.
“I feel a bit imprisoned by these attacks repeating themselves,” she said. “When people say, ‘we mustn’t live in fear,’ I wish I could, but I just don’t know how to.”
Two years on from the massacre, Jolivet said she was focusing on her children, Mila, 8, and Tom, 4.
While he may have been a graphic designer by day, the 39-year-old Foultier was a musician by night. He had founded a group, Nite Nite, with his best friend Rudy Fagnaud.
At the time of his death the pair were nearing completion of their first album. Fagnaud has since completed the record with Jolivet writing the lyrics for a new song composed as a tribute to the young father, and the others who died in the attacks.
“The terrorists want us to be silent,” said Jolivet, who said refused to feel angry because it does not help. “We’re not shutting up. His songs, his voice, his bass is going to play forever even if he’s dead. It’s like my revenge.”