November 22 has been a sacred day to me since John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 – 44 years ago.
I remember that weekend, with the TV on and following events as they unfolded. I remember feeding son Terry in his high chair – he was about a year and a half. It seemed not right that life would go on, that babies needed to be fed and laundry done, even though a true light had gone out of the world.
To quote William Butler Yeats, in his Easter 1916, “All changed, changed utterly.” Camelot collapsed, our dreams of that good and perfect world were gone in an instant. The deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy 5 years later confirmed that there was no going back.
That no miracle was going to save us – that we had to work to make this a better world. With no guarantee of the outcome.
In these dark days, when there is no leadership in the White House, it is good to remember the days before November 22, 1963.