J.F.K.

Monday, Nov. 22, 2010-

Every year, the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy�s assassination brings forth sadness and nostalgia.
I did what I always do on this day: find a conspiracy theory show to watch on TV, complete with old black and white film clips of the motorcade in Dallas , Lee Harvey Oswald , and theories about the trajectory of the bullets and the now iconic phrase "the grassy knoll".

Anyone who grew up in Boston the 60's in a Catholic democratic family , witnessed the awe that people had for JFK. My grandmother had a picture of him in her living room, right next to the picture of her deceased husband, (right above the Madonna statue and the plastic covered Italian Provincial couch.)

Even now, memories of a thrilling sense of the Kennedy mystique can obscure any negative version of the man. Both blatantly and subliminally, he evokes an image of youth, vigor and spontaneity .

I looked through the New York Times today for some commemorative articles to mark this day.
What made me sad was to see that there was only article about the anniversary of the death of President Kennedy in the new York Times. Younger people are apparently looking at the Kennedy years with greater detachment and disinterest. That makes me feel regretful and old, or at least older than the average reader of the New York Times.

I could only find an op/Ed written by a secret service agent, telling about his personal relationship and his experience as Jackie Kennedy's Secret Service agent. He accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to meet her husband in Dallas on November 22nd 1963. Weeks before that he had sat with her and watched her fall into a deep depression after the death of her premature newborn son , posthumously named Patrick. She decided to go to Dallas to get her mind off her grief. The agent said that on the way to Dallas, at least for a short time, "the light had returned to her eyes".

He was in the car with the First Lady when he heard the explosive noise as the shots were fired. He jumped on top of both of them in case another bullet were to follow. He was right next to her afterwards in the hospital as her husband was pronounced dead..
He said: "Her eyes reflected the sorrow of the nation and the world � ."
This was a sentence which seemed like gross understatement.

Some of the worst chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life had happened to Jackie all at once, in a torrent.
It was haunting and sad. .If you are past 50 you will remember hearing the news first hand with horror and disbelief. You remember it each year.

I was in the second grade. It was announced at about 2 p.m. Eastern time. The nuns said it was God's will and then closed the school and sent everyone home early. I walked home and came into my house. My mother didn't know why I was home so early. I told her "President Kennedy was killed". She didn't know . She put on the TV and broke down crying. Her response, felt so sharply, was contagious . It made my jaw tighten and my stomach ache. It is a sorrow I still feel today.

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We all know that life is finite, but the enormity of an assassination brings out the demon of anticipatory grief and the fearful vision of our own demise .
One thing I've learned over the past 47 years since that event, is that we have to trust the process of life. Things happen that leave us bewildered and afraid, alone , crying in the dark. The existence of God doesn't have a thing to do with the good or bad events of life - it's simply the laws of physics, the free will of human beings, the random nature of humanity, or inhumanity and evolutionary ethics. As a veteran of 12 years of Catholic school, followed by being a science major in college, I look for the ways in which Science and Theology are not mutually exclusive . No matter what happens, there's still every reason to believe that there is a divine force of creation that created life, the universe and everything , which includes all aspects of science, laws of physics, and Darwinian evolutionary theory .

Grieving is the necessary price we all pay for having the ability to love other people. Our lives consist of a series of attachments and inevitable losses, and evolution has given us the emotional tools to handle both.

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