Death Visits a Child

  This coming November 20^th marks the 50^th anniversary of the assignation of President Kennedy.  The television is playing stories around the clock informing us of all the details of who, what, when, where and why of that fateful day.  I am not watching any of these.  It’s not that I know all about that day.  Nor that I don’t care.  The fall of 1963 had another meaning for me and the killing of JFK was only a part.  That year was the year “Death visits a Child”.

 

   When I was 8 years old, almost 9, in late September 1963 I remember sitting in our car in a parking lot at a Missouri hospital.  Mom and I, and my 2 year old little brother, were waiting for my dad who had gone into the hospital where his mom was.  I don’t remember much about the drive down from Illinois but for some reason I remember eating candy waiting for dad.  When he came out of the hospital I saw my father cry for the first time in my life.  Grandma Watts had died.  This is very big for a little boy who is starting to be taught the life lessons needed to grow into a man.  My father cried, my grandma Watts had died.  This is the first death I had experienced in my short life.  Since I was so young my mom and dad had Grandpa and Grandma Pannebecker (mom’s parents) take care of me during the visitation and funeral.  Later we returned to Illinois and life returned to normal for a little boy.

 

On November 8^th I turned 9 years old.  Five days later my mom’s mom died.  Mom, my brother and I rode down to Missouri with mom’s sister and family.  Dad followed soon after when he could get off of work.  For some reason I don’t remember much at all about this trip except that Grandma Pannebecker had died.  I do remember saying to my mom “two down and one to go”.   She looked at me shocked and said “don’t say that”.  I was making reference to the fact that both grandmas had now passed away in six weeks’ time and one great-grandma remained alive.  As a 9 year old losing both grandmas in such a short time had changed me.  I was not thinking any great thoughts, just all that was normal in my life was changing.  For a little boy change like this makes you begin to think that all things in your life may change.  You begin to wonder what else is going to change, who else is going to die.  Death was changing my world and he was not through with me.

 

November 20^th, 1963.  I am sitting in class when one of my fellow students, a girl named Leslie Maquet, came back from the principal’s office and starting whispering in the class that the President had been shot.  Not long after the principal came over the school speakers telling us the President had died.  Back then there was only three channels on TV and all three were playing nothing but this story.  I saw Ruby shoot Oswald.  I watch as the new President was sworn in on Air Force One with Kennedy’s widow looking on still in her blood stained dress.  I watch President Kennedy’s flag draped casket lay in state in the Capital Rotunda.  I watched John salute his father’s casket as it rolled by on an Army caisson.  The rider less horse with the empty boots turned backwards in the stirrups.  All the flags were at half-staff.  Then “Little Grandma” died five days after Kennedy.

 

I didn’t go with mom to Missouri to her grandma’s funeral because I had already missed too much school.  I didn’t need to for death to tell me my life had changed once again.  I have referred to 1963 as my year of death.  But it was only the beginning.  Latter in the 60’s Bobby Kennedy died.  Martin Luther King Jr. died.  I watched the Watts riots.  I watched Detroit burn.  I watched the Vietnam War on TV every night.  The limp bloody bodies of our GI’s carried across the TV screen day after day.

 

About this time I started doodling dead trees.  Leafless branches attached to dead stumps graced my pages.  Latter I was told by a girl I used to work with that my doodling showed my preoccupation with death.  Perhaps.  However I know death has taught me the rule of change.  The rule simply is “All changes”.  We die.  Life changes.  We move on.  We flow through this river of time, going from one scene to the next in this play of life.  Yet I struggle with this change every day.  I want my life to be the same today as yesterday.  I want the people who were in my life yesterday here today.  I know I cannot get what I want.  I know I must accept the change and the sorrow.  I know this because in 1963 death visited a child.