A Better Death, A Better End

For those of us who lived through those years, it is the end of an era. For those of you who did not live through it, it may be as incomprehensible to you as Michael Jackson's death is to me, which for the life of me, I cannot understand why all the fuss. Rock star? Yes. Innovating Musician. Yes. On a par with Edward Kennedy? Definitely no. On a par with the Lion of the Senate, and the greatest senator in the last one hundred years, as he is being called, most definitely no.

I have always felt that life took a wrong turn on November 22, 1963, when his brother was shot in Dallas. I remember vividly a friend giving us the bad news at approximately 1:30 P.M. I remember my grade school teachers crying in the hallway. We had lived through the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 and in spite of it, life seemed to be improving.

Bobby's death in June 1968 was also a shot that was felt by all of us and it still makes me feel sad. I could not believe that two brothers had been shot for what they believed in.

Ted Kennedy's decision to be a senator, believing that he could best serve his country that way was noble, and his decision to not seek the presidency was nobler still, after losing the Democratic nomination to Carter in 1980.

This is, to me, the end of an era, an era that began November 1963, when his older brother's assasination made me interested in American politics, an interest that I have not lost all these years.

He will be buried in Arlington cemetery, because of his status as a Senator, and a member of the military, having served between 1951 and 1953, in Korea.

I hope to be able to make the trip some time in the future and see the three Kennedy brother's graves.

Heartbroken, that is how I feel, it still brings tears to my eyes. I remember the caisson, bearing the coffin, marching off into the ages, and a three year old saluting his father's coffin.

Fortunately, the last of the four Kennedy brothers dies a better death, and one can only be grateful, as he now sails into the sunset.

Michael who?