Live and Let Die

Live and Let Die

I want to share a thought with you and then will offer a piece that only a few have read. I truly believe that in our everyday lives we should in fact let people live their lives the way they wish to live their lives, not try and change them, or judge them, or criticize, nut just let them be who they want to be while on this planet. I also believe that the same is true of dying. People should be allowed to die the way that want to, and I say that knowing full well that if I could die doing something I love, skiing, cycling, making whoopee, then I would rather that, then some stroke that takes forever to kill me, or some cancer that does the same, and I don’t think we have the right to tell someone how they should live or die.

In the above I am not saying that people should be allowed to harm others in any way, nor am I saying that I am for or against assisted suicide, or for or against abortion, those are much lengthier discussions and there are an awful lot of “grey areas,” a lot of assumptions and “what-ifs” associated with making those kinds of judgments that I will probably tackle somewhere along the way. I am also not saying we should help people out if they need help, or if they have wandered off their path, but in general I am saying let people be who they want to be and do the same for yourself.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.

I offer you, Camelot, written on an airplane, just after learning the news about John F. Kennedy, Jr., completely unedited. These are just my thoughts as I floated through the air that night.

Camelot. Who was it that first laid that burden on the Kennedy’s and specifically on John F. Kennedy, Jackie, Caroline and eventually John F. Kennedy, Junior? It is understandable, I suppose, that someone looked at the way the Kennedy family lived and the money and power they had and decided that it must be like royalty living in Camelot. Unfortunately, not only is that an incredibly unfair burden to place on any one family, but it was also horribly inaccurate. “Camelot, I know it sounds a bit bizarre…the rain may never fall ‘till after sunset…,” in truth the Kennedy’s have seen plenty of “rain”, and pain and sorrow.

The death of John F. Kennedy, Junior affected me in an almost inexplicable way. I definitely did not believe what I was hearing at first, and then I spent a great deal of the weekend believing that he would be found, way off course, but safe. The longer the search went on and the more it began to look real the less I was able to deal with the sadness and the deep sense of loss. I felt as though someone else in our family had died.

I grew up in New England in a large Italian family. I was raised as an Italian Catholic spending my summers in Rhode Island and my winters in Vermont. I literally grew up either in a sail boat or on skis and surrounded by a large number of relatives. My early summers were spent in Saunderstown, Rhode Island in a large 11 bedroom house on Narragansett Bay with a huge, lush, beautifully green, flowing lawn that ended where the bay began. Weekends were joyous occasions with multiple boats in the water and an endless stream of food orchestrated by my Grandmother with help from all of the aunts.

This was also a time filled with many happy occasions. We had weddings, births, graduations of one kind or another. The weddings would last two or three days and have hundreds of people there to celebrate with us. Unfortunately we also had many tragic and difficult events to deal with, deaths, divorce and feuds within the family. The ironic part of all of this was that there was so little difference between the good times and the bad. The whole family would be there to share the joy or the sorrow. We always congregated in the same places and there was amazing food no matter the occasion. Through it all my Grandmother was always the Matriarch, the queen. Even to those in power in Rhode Island.

The death of John F. Kennedy, Junior is what has had me thinking of all this the past week. Much of the talk in the media has been about retreating back to the family compound and about the Kennedy’s closeness as a family. I can relate to this in because of how I was raised and because of all the joy and tragedy we have shared as a family. I can also relate to this because much of my family has always believed very strongly in what the Kennedy family has stood for and for what they have done for this country. It is because the Kennedy family has always attempted to do so much for our country that they have been unable to live their lives without cameras following their every move. Each tragedy has been magnified, intensified by the media and each celebration violated.

It is through this endless coverage of the Kennedy’s, however, that we have been allowed to feel as though we know them so well. It is because of this coverage that most of the country has felt each loss with the Kennedy’s and especially, it seems, the losses of John F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, Jr. It has been said that people remember exactly where they were when they first heard the news that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. People felt not just as if they had lost a President; but that they had lost a friend, and the dreams of a nation. I will never forget where I was when I first heard the news about John F. Kennedy, Junior. For me, John F. Kennedy, Jr. had become my hope that we, as a nation, would again embrace a Kennedy as our President and that we would be led by a man of incredible intelligence, charisma, dignity and class, but also the power necessary to be a great President.

The death of John F. Kennedy, Junior is for me, as I am sure it is for many Americans, like the loss of a friend or a family member and it is like losing your dreams. John F. Kennedy would have been a great President in the end if he had been allowed to serve as long as he should have. John F. Kennedy, Junior would have been President someday and he would have been a great President. He would have been the type of President to make us all very proud of our country and our President again because he was the type of man that made us proud to be Americans.

Good-bye John. Be happy where you are now, with the two women that love you most.