Many Still Wake for Him...

"The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity." ~Seneca

When I was a kid, there was a pop-culture question people asked: "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" It was one of those conversational topics that was an ice-breaker in many ways, because most people of a certain age could recall exactly where they were when they got the news that President Kennedy had not only been shot, but assassinated. [This applies to Elvis, John Lennon, Princess Diana and most recently, when Michael Jackson died.] When someone has ever asked me that question, I say in complete seriousness with no intent of wisecracking that I was more than likely in my crib, asleep. I was, after all, little more than three months old.
I can, however, tell you exactly where I was the Saturday morning [July 17, 1999] at 7 a.m., when my father called me and said, "turn on the news, then call me back." No hello. No good morning. Just that simple, albeit, direct statement.
I crawled out of bed, mumbling and grumpy, because he had woken me up on my weekend morning with a cryptic message and no further detail. Still, I followed his directions, and went into the den to turn on the television. I felt my heart race, however, when I saw the headlines that John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s plane was missing. I sat there for a minute, trying to focus – trying to understand – trying to recall from my sleepy haze, if it was April 1^st, or some other justification that might explain why someone was playing some kind of prank on America, that WASN’T funny, as the ticker-tape of information moved steadily across the bottom of the screen, and helicopters flew back and forth over the water looking for a small aircraft that seemed to have disappeared into the night, from the face of the earth. The thing was, news agencies weren’t in the habit of pulling pranks. I glanced at the calender and saw the date. It wasn’t April 1^st. It wasn’t a prank. This was real.
"Holy S^*t!!!" I thought. It was, as it turned out, a true "Holy S^*t moment!
I put on a pot of coffee, fed the animals, then sat down and called my father back.
"What happened?" I asked. "Last I heard, he had left on Friday en route to a family wedding."
"It’s a mess!" my father said. "It seems to be a real mess for that poor family!"
I didn’t have too much to say. I wasn’t as up to speed as he was on the situation, so I told him I’d call him back later, after I’d had a little time to wake up, have coffee and get my bearings. Like millions of people, the Kennedy’s, for me, were America’s family. They didn’t just belong to them. What happened to them, happened to us. It had been going on for years! When tragedy struck them, in some way, we felt it too.
It was one of those long, eery days where you sat fixated in front of the t.v. screen watching the same helicopters moving round and round and round and doing it over and over and over with no results. You kept waiting for the media to report, "There they are! There they are! We found them!" and then everyone could break out in a relieved clap with backslapping, followed up with a "Whew! That was scary-close!" But, no such proclamation came. It was more like, "Houston, we’ve got a problem!" And, it stayed that way.
With every passing minute, deeper dread set in. Yet, you couldn’t seem to pull yourself away from the television screen, because you thought, somehow, the more eyes staring at the huge expanse of water, the greater chance that somebody, somewhere, would surely spot them all holding onto a rock, a piece of floating airplane debris or, hopefully, that they had washed over to a small, out of the way, piece of the island. Surely, that’s what happened! In those moments that were suspended between hope and doom, those are the thoughts one held onto, because anything else was inconceivable! The worst case scenario couldn’t be true! Not again!
All day, I sat there in front of the tv, staring at the screen and listening to the newscasters giving minute-by-minute then hour-by- hour updates. With every passing hour, it felt more and more dire. There was talk, later in the afternoon, of shifting from being a search and rescue mission to a search and recovery one. I remember thinking: How is that even possible? Don’t give up yet! I think I even screamed at the television, "WE CAN’T GIVE UP YET!"
This was my generation’s golden Kennedy. John, Jr. was the American within his family and within the "American political consciousness" to whom the torch had been passed. People who still believed in the dream that his father and his Uncle Bobby had espoused, and that his Uncle Teddy continued to fight for, looked to him and several of the Kennedy cousins to keep that hope alive. It didn’t seem possible that his torch might be extinguished.
I believe, and don’t ask me how, because I truly felt numb, that I got a load of laundry washed and folded as well as a load of dishes in the dishwasher that day. I lightly dusted in between reports of latest developments and vacuumed during commercial breaks. In such circumstances, the mind, at least mine, needs to occupy itself with other things, if only for a moment. It wouldn’t however, be long before I sat back down on the couch and bit my fingernails, waiting for some word that John Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn and her sister, Lauren, had been found. The minutes became an hour, the hour became two. Periodically, I would call my father or he would call me, and we would talk about any new information we had heard, on the off-chance that either of us had missed something. We were holding vigil as if this was happening to our family, and, in some, small way, it was.
Around the time we had to leave to drive over to Dad’s for supper, I felt certain that they’d all be located by the time we walked through my father’s front door. Tom carried a bag of groceries inside and I carried another. I’d no more gotten my key in the door and unlocked that I called to my father: "Did they find him?"
"No," he replied, glumly.
By this point, my husband, who had worked that day, had been brought up to speed regarding the tragedy that had been unfolding all day.
"Boy," he said to my father, walking into the den. "This is something, huh?"
My father glanced up from the position he was sitting in: arm folded across his chest, other arm on top of it with his index and third fingers pressing into his cheek and his thumb cradling his chin. This was a serious position for him. It meant that he was intently focused on something – solemn in thought and giving whatever was on his mind, careful consideration.
"Terrible," he replied, shaking his head. "Just terrible."
The mood in the house that night and over the next several days was heavy. It was a roller-coaster ride of emotions that had nothing to do with fun or excitement. It was an up-and-down of disbelief, mixed with concern, coupled with foreboding.
How long can someone survive, drifting out into the ocean without food or water? I didn’t know for certain, though I seemed to recall miraculous tales of people being found adrift, weeks after they’d entered the water.
I recall after the second day of endless searching, my frustration boiled over and I snapped.
"Why can’t they find them?" there was a demanding in my tone. I wanted someone to be held accountable for why this hadn’t been resolved YESTERDAY! "We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t find a missing aircraft?" I said in disbelief.
My father understood my frustration, but tried to offset my mood with a positive spin. "They’re doing the best they can, Sug!" [Phonetically, that’s "shug" for sugar; Daddy called me and my sister that at times. It’s a southern term of endearment.]
And, so it went for days and endless days. I recall, at one point, I didn’t want them to be found, because I knew it wouldn’t be good, if they were. As long as we could hold onto the belief that they were alive somewhere, we didn’t have to face the fact that something good had truly come to an end. The cause wouldn’t be lost.
Sadly, on Wednesday, July 21^st, the news came in over the radio that they had found his plane about 115 feet down on the ocean’s floor just off Martha’s Vineyard. His body was located nearby. And, with that reporting, there it was – another sad indicator that the little that remained of Camelot had truly left us. As went the father, so went his son...gone too soon!
I remember walking down to my father’s office, after word came late on that Wednesday afternoon. He was sitting at the round table where he held meetings, with the chair pulled out semi-perpendicular from it, staring at the small tv screen. CNN was giving the latest updates.
I reached down and gave him a hug as I uttered a, "Man, this sucks!" commentary.
He shook his head and replied, "terrible! Just terrible!" Which, now that I think about it, was all I recalled him saying about the entire ordeal.
Dad pulled a chair out for me to sit and join him, since it was almost 5 o’clock.
Again, we were quiet as we both stared at the television, watching and listening to more tragic, historical moments being made.
After a few minutes of watching, I didn’t want to hear anymore. Tears were on the cusp, and I needed some air – a change of scenery. I rose from the chair and glanced over at Dad.
"I’ve got to drop by the store, but I’ll see you at the house in about an hour."
Wednesday’s were also nights when Tom and I went to Dad’s for dinner.
I think he could tell that the last thing I felt like doing was cook and clean up.
"Why don’t you call Tom," he suggested. "And see if he can meet us over at Il Porto."
I nodded as he pushed the phone, that was on the table, over to me and was relieved when I caught Tom before he’d left to go to Dad’s house.
It was one of those somber dinners – the conversation was sporadic, the mood was regretful but the food, as always, was good.
As a light interlude between the meal and dessert, my husband and father spoke of one of their favorite summertime topics: how The Yankees, The Braves and The Orioles were all doing at that point in the season. It was a welcomed hint of normalcy.
Two days later, came the memorial service, which was fittingly held at sea. It was the final ceremony that concluded the tragedy that had occurred a week prior, but it would definitely not be the end of it. Twelve years later, I can still hear the poignant words of Sen. Edward Kennedy, in my mind’s eye, as he eulogized his beloved nephew:

"The Irish Ambassador recited a poem to John's father and mother soon after John was born. I can hear it again now, at this different and difficult moment:

We wish to the new child,
A heart that can be beguiled,
By a flower,
That the wind lifts,
As it passes.
If the storms break for him,
May the trees shake for him,
Their blossoms down.
In the night that he is troubled,
May a friend wake for him,
So that his time be doubled,
And at the end of all loving and love
May the Man above,
Give him a crown.

We thank the millions who have rained blossoms down on John's memory. He and his bride have gone to be with his mother and father, where there will never be an end to love. He was lost on that troubled night, but we will always wake for him, so that his time, which was not doubled, but cut in half, will live forever in our memory, and in our beguiled and broken hearts. We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But like his father, he had every gift but length of years. We who have loved him from the day he was born, and watched the remarkable man he became, now bid him farewell..."

There are moments that make a person always wonder "what might have been" if history had not been altered in the way it had been at a given moment in time. How would things have been different? What might the landscape of the world look like if this event had not happened as it had? I remember my father verbalizing that sentiment on the 30^th Anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination.
"I often wonder how different things might have been if those three hadn’t been gunned down and taken from the world, before they’d had the chance to finish what they’d set out to do?" he reflected.
I knew he was talking about John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy.
I wonder that myself at times, with President Sadat, Princess Diana and John Kennedy, Jr. added to that unfortunate mix.
Sometimes, when I hear the tragic news of movers and shakers dying too young – passing across the landscape of this life, like a shooting star, I go to my music file and pull up a rendition of Brian’s Song, a.k.a. The Hands of Time, which is the best and most moving version I’ve ever heard. I close my eyes, and I listen. Then, I do something that some say one should never do, but I can’t help myself: I wonder, "what if?", as I get lost in the beautiful melody of The Hands of Time...

http://youtu.be/4QUIzv1iJKg [Brian’s Song, a.k.a. The Hands of Time/Sandro Bisotti~pianist]

written by Jhill Perran
July 16, 2011

Remembering John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. November 25, 1960-July 16, 1999