That awful day in 1968.

[electric_blue68]

47. Dear Life - I soooo hear you lasllib!

There have only been a couple of years out of these 53 when June arrives that I didn't remember what was coming up, and 6/5 I didn't blink an eye till later in the day, or the next.

In fact I joined DU on 6/6 last year because 1) the sub forum I was on in politics on a liberal music groups site wasn't lively enough at that point, with the election x months away, and 2) the former guy in office was such an afront to RFK's memory that I had to find another liberal political site to work off steam, learn stuff, keep up with news etc and remembered seeing DU back near the start at an Internet Cafe. 👍

Anyway...
I was asleep in NYC and I woke up a little after 4AM with the strangest stomach ache I'd ever had. I'd long out grown the nervous stomach ache I might get on occasion when waaay younger going to school. I turned on my dad's little transistor radio, and heard the news.

I really didn't go back to sleep, blurrily made my way through my HS day. I overheard one person say they were happy. It took a lot out of me not to slap them. A subdued day at a rather usually boisterous HS as we said in low voices to each other that we hoped he'd make it. 😔

I listened to a particular radio show who's host had had many of JFK, and then Bobby's people on his show that I'd been listening to since some time in '67. Much of the staff, and advisors, etc that you read their names in history books now would talk away. Finally went to sleep.

Woke up again around 4am with that same stomach ache in time to hear Frank Mackowitz read his statement.

A friend and I stood on line for ?5 hours to view the casket at St Patrick's Cathedral. Then the next day my mom made my dad go with me (because she thought I looked terrible) to see the procession going to Penn Station for the train.

I had to study for year end exaims as I watched the train travel to DC. I slid between being so annoyed that I had to study so couldn't always pay full attention, and being in surreal sorrow.

Do you remember the crowd singing 🎶 The Battle Hymn of The Republic? 😔

My folks in 1964 when we visited our cousins right outside of DC (I was 11) we went to visit JFK's grave with the internal flame, and iconic white picket fence. It only dawned on me last year the sadness they must have felt, that they'd go to honor him.

Decades later on a Perfect DC Summer Day - low's '80s, low humidity, crystal clear deep blue sky I visited both JFK's final grave with a circular area with the quotes, and everything. As I turned I saw the simple white cross on the green for RFK further down the slope. Of course I was going to visit that, too. Facing the cross they had a space, and two quotes from him.

It still hurts all these decades later. The paths our country could have taken then, if....