June 6th

Over at The Castle there will be posts about D-Day. I'll enjoy reading them. I am, of course, interested for many reasons.....history geek, military fan, John Wayne fan (The Longest Day). However, June 6th has always held other meanings for me.

1968 was a strange year for me. Shortly after I turned 7, my grandfather passed away. The patriarch. My mother's father. A beloved figure in my life. There were so many tears. A short while later Bobby Kennedy was assasinated. The world wept with me. Even then I knew that was a great loss. Boston mourned and even at seven, I felt the loss. As the years went by and I learned more........Bobby was always my favorite. SouthieBoy and I snipe back and forth about Bobby and Jack. We each have our reasons. Maybe it's my age, but Jack was never as real to me. Maybe it was my own loss two months earlier. Regardless, every June 6th, Bobby is what springs to mind. Even in 1980 when on that singularly beautiful late spring day I married Tom & Frank's father.

1968 was the last time FatBoy had anything to say that I found worth listening to. We had not begun to despise him at that point. In 1968 I had not begun to feel the anger that came later.....why was Teddy alive and Bobby was dead? No, in 1968 the tremor in his voice pierced my heart.

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

"Those of us, who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world.

"As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'"

If you click anywhere on the quote above there is audio of the eulogy.