So this week happens to be the 50th anniversary week of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as well as the 50th anniversary special celebrating that great British icon, Doctor Who.
As I have been watching multiple different television events commemorating the death of Kennedy, it has occurred to me that we still care about this tragic loss because of a common thread the late president shares with Who--hope and another chance.
For non-Whovians, that statement may come completely out of left field, but it wouldn't be the first time I associated two seemingly unrelated things with each other. After all, Facebook tells me that I use my left and right brain equally, and who am I to argue with the sound statistical data of such an important data mine field? I figure the equal usage of both sides of my brain gives me license to say just about anything with great authority.
Like many, I have always found myself fascinated by the almost Shakespearean history of the Kennedy family. Over the years, I'm sure I have watched dozens of programs poring over the so-called conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, and who hasn't seen the Abraham Zapruder film of the event a hundred times?
This year feels a little different. I don't know if it's because I am expecting our daughter in just a few short months, but I suspect that has something to do with it. I've seen images of Jackie following the death of her husband hundreds of times. But this year, she looks different to me. This year, I see her as a person and not an icon. This year, I see her as a wife and a mother who has just had her entire world ripped away from her. And I think that's part of the reason why we still care about this loss fifty years later.
The Kennedys are an iconic and powerful American family, but John and Jackie, along with their children, were also a young family. They brought something new and fresh to the American table. John and Bobby were making strides towards increased civil rights. The Kennedy administration was profoundly interested in moving America forward in the realms of technology and innovation. And who could argue with the fresh faced beauty that Jackie brought to the White House? These people were young, interesting, progressive and beautiful.
In so many ways, they represented a bright new start. Now, it goes without saying that the perfection everyone saw didn't match up with the reality. President Kennedy was deeply flawed, both morally and physically. He was a well-known womanizer and the injuries he sustained during his military service left him in chronic pain and at times nearly debilitated. But in spite of the flaws, a nation wanted to believe in the light that he and his family projected. The destruction of that young family was a loss of innocence. And isn't the loss of innocence through destruction always the hardest loss to reconcile?
When I see the deep and unabashed sorrow present in Jackie's eyes, I see a pain that cannot be reconciled. The nation may have lost a president and an image, but she lost so much more. She held her husband in her lap as their future together slipped away. And as much as I love my own husband, I know that those moments, a part of her slipped away too.
And how does all of this associate with a fictional television character? That's a valid question.
Clearly, I wasn't around fifty years ago. While I am fascinated by the Kennedy legacy and assassination, my perceptions and thoughts about the Kennedys are truly from second and third hand accounts by the talking heads of television. There's a certain level of detachment that will always be present between myself and that 50-year-old tragedy.
As the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who approaches, it occurs to me that this Christmas is also fast approaching, and this year's Doctor Who special will usher in a new incarnation of the Doctor. I will admit to being a complete Janie Come Lately to this television franchise. The current Doctor has been my first Doctor, and you never forget your first Doctor. I was heartbroken when I lost Amy and Rory Pond. I know it will be even harder to lose Eleven.
If it's so hard to lose a fictional character like a companion or a Doctor, why latch on so hard in the first place? Hope and another chance. When the Doctor regenerates, we get a chance to experience a new hope and maybe even a new path for our universe. Every new Doctor is a new version of someone we have come to view as infinite possibility. This 900-year-old man lords over time and shows us that as linear as it seems to most of us, we have the ability to step out of line and see it from many different moments and spaces.
Who shows us that we cannot count on hope and our futures being hard and steadfastly tangible things. These things are more "wibbly wobbly."
And that is the reality of the Kennedy legacy as well. Hope and the light can be stolen at a moment's notice. We never know when our lives will be swept away. Some of us will be ripped away by violence. Some of us may be washed away by the waters of a devastating storm. While most of us will simply fade like distant stars over time.
It's hard to accept any loss, but those we experience without warning always seem to be the most unjust and irreconcilable. The senselessness of these losses often prevents us from being able to see the real picture, and to be able to focus on what was really there to lose in the first place. In the course of the last few days, someone speaking of the Kennedy tragedy made a very profound statement. I didn't know I was going to write about it at the time, so I don't recall who made the statement or the exact wording, but in a nutshell, they made the observation that we have spent so much of the last fifty years caught up in the idea of conspiracy theories and getting to the bottom of what really happened that terrible day in November, that we forget to focus on what we actually lost. We forget to focus on who Kennedy was, and the meaning and value of his presidency. Essentially, we have let a man or men--whatever you believe about the assassination--not only to kill a president, but to steal our ability to truly see him.
After fifty years, maybe it's time for us all to regenerate.
