Monday, April 27, 2015

make gentle the life of this world



1968.


------------------ [excerpt, Spoto / Jacqueline Kennedy biography] ------------ There was again dreadful news, this time from Los Angeles. 


Just after midnight on June 5...Robert Kennedy was shot twice....In the early evening, Jackie arrived....She was at Bobby's bedside with Ethel and two of Bobby's sisters when he died just before two o'clock on the morning of June 6.  He was forty-two years old.


Jackie was shattered, and for perhaps the first time since Jack's assassination, she turned to her ancient faith for support.  "The Church is at its best at the time of death," she told Bobby's press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz.





"The Catholic Church understands death.  I'll tell you who else understands death -- the black churches.





...At the funeral of Martin Luther King, I was looking at those faces, and I realized that they know death.  They see it all the time, and they're ready for it in the way in which a good Catholic is."


And then, in a wounded, detached tone, she concluded:  "We know death.  As a matter of fact, if it weren't for the children, we'd welcome it."





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{excerpt:  Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis:  A Life, by Donald Spoto.  St. Martin's Press-New York - 2000}


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