On November 22, 2013 I posted something in connection with remembering the death of John Kennedy. It also contained the following:
"As powerful as that memory remains, it was the news of the death of Robert Kennedy that has the most connection for me. My grandmother was visiting, and the two of us were watching television together when the news broke. She gasped and said, "Oh, poor Ethel, with all those children." To understand fully, you need to know that my mother, the eldest of five children, was only eight years old when her father was killed. When a former employee of her father came to the door, she and her brothers clustered around Grandmother and heard her tell the visitor when my grandfather would return from an appointment. The man left, but walked only a short distance from the house, where he waited out of sight until my grandfather returned. He shot him at close range. My grandmother never mentioned how difficult it must have been for her, not only lose the love of her life, but to rear five children in a depression era world. In her softly spoken "Oh, poor Ethel with all those children" she revealed perhaps more than she realized. Her expressed empathy came from an understanding that most of us will never understand."
Hearing of the events planned earlier this week to commemorate the anniversary of Robert Kennedy's death reminded me of my earlier post, but mostly of that hour or so with grandmother. Like many, we were glued to the television upon hearing the news. Grandmother's life was very different from that of Ethel Kennedy. She was never in the spotlight, nor did she have the same financial resources. In almost every way they had nothing in common, yet in that awful moment of hearing the news on television, my grandmother felt an instant connection to Mrs. Kennedy.
Grandmother died four years later, and we never again talked about hearing the news that day or about the day my grandfather was murdered. Now I wish I had asked her more about her life, but even if I had, she probably wouldn't have talked about the bad parts. She was truly a remarkable woman in her own quiet way. She lived the rest of her life in the same house, alone once her children moved away after they finished college or married.
On that day as we watched the news, it didn't occur to me that my grandfather had been killed almost forty-four years earlier. Realizing it now makes Grandmother's quiet utterance seem more remarkable. The time that had elapsed vanished, her reaction was instant as she remembered what had happened to her and what the years ahead might hold for Mrs. Kennedy.
But now, fifty years later, I can still hear her voice in my head, as clearly as if she were seated next to me on the sofa as she was that day. As I remember her sympathetic expression and all the unspoken things it revealed, I marvel once again at the courage with which she lived.
