"THAT DISCOURTESY OF DEATH"
MCCAIN, JOHN
"THAT DISCOURTESY OF DEATH" by John McCain TWO MONTHS AGO, I was invited to participate with John Kennedy, his sister, Caroline, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and several other members of the family in the...
...The personal loss of those who knew him well, of course, is immeasurably more painful...
...Near the end of the poem, Yeats observes how good a life his young friend made of his too few days, and tries to reconcile himself to the loss with the wistful remark, "What made us dream that he could comb grey hair...
...But John and his lovely bride, Carolyn, were especially so...
...Were that all I knew of him, I would grieve his loss...
...The older we grow the more ; accustomed we become to death...
...In our encounters, he was friendly, well mannered, and thoughtful, not just to me but to everyone in the room...
...He was a featured player in one of the more powerful legends in American political life, a legend that most Americans at one time or another have been enamored of, and that now seems inexpressibly sad...
...Given the temptations attending wealth, privilege, and beauty, it would have surprised no one if he had been arrogant and self-centered...
...The nation grieves for him—an honor accorded relatively few people— and after my brief exposure to him, I understand why...
...Jimmy reacted to the attention as most kids his age would, with a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment...
...that, and the comfort of knowing that John has been reunited with the father he lost long ago and the mother who loved him so well that he became a good man...
...That is true of John Kennedy, who to many of us seemed only yesterday a fatherless 3-year-old...
...and how well they reflected the loving care with which their mother had raised them...
...Ted Kennedy went to considerable lengths to make sure the birthday was publicly noted and celebrated...
...But, of course, he was more than that...
...Ted Kennedy, and several other members of the family in the annual Profile in Courage Award events at the Kennedy Presidential Library...
...A Yeats poem, "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory," laments the passing at a young age of a "dear friend's dear son...
...As it happened, the award ceremony occurred on the eleventh birthday of my youngest son, Jimmy...
...And yet there are some whose loss : seems impossible to accept...
...Cindy and I left Boston grateful for the experience and impressed by how gracious and considerate John and Caroline were...
...John Kennedy was a splendid young man...
...They talked with him in a quietly playful way that Jimmy appreciated as much as my wife Cindy and I appreciated John's compliments for raising a nice boy and for choosing Arizona over washington as our children's home...
...Though we had only a passing acquaintance, I saw, as others did, that it was easy to like him...
...All the Kennedys present were very kind to my son...
...how seriously they took their responsibility to honor their father's memory...
...John McCain is the senior senator from Arizona...
...It's a cold heart that has no sympathy for the Kennedy family...
...When, at his invitation, I appeared before his magazine's editorial board, he encouraged the office interns to attend and ask questions, an unusually considerate gesture to them by their editor-in-chief (unless, of course, they were needed to fill seats because I had failed to draw much of a crowd, in which case it was an unusually considerate gesture to me...
...But he was quite the opposite...
...I pray for their comfort, as I pray I for the repose of the souls of their loved ones...
...It is inconceivable that this son should now "share in that discourtesy of death" alongside friends of the poet's who died in old age...
...for Ted Kennedy, who must too often assume the duties of the head of a family on whom fortune and misfortune fall in great and equal measure...
...Maybe that kind of sentiment is all we have to assuage the nation's, perhaps even the families', grief...
...The Bessettes, whose broken hearts mourn the staggering loss of two beautiful, accomplished sisters, must know a grief that in this moment is inconsolable...
...and especially for Caroline, who has suffered more loss than anyone of her young age should ever have to bear...
Vol. 4 • August 1999 • No. 43
