It is November again in southern Illinois as it is across the rest of the nation and this world of ours. November is a month of change when the fall begins to give way to the winter that will encompass us until the spring again arrives and ushers in the coming summer once again. It is the passage of the seasons and the world is in order as it always is.
We watched our accustomed amount of television news yesterday on CNN as we usually do. We noticed, however, that there was no mention of what once made this day so very noticeable and special and memorable to so many who are still among us, and, to so many of us who have now passed away. November 22 is the anniversary of the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. We marked the day by going over to one of our favorite eating places in another state with a friend who has been our friend long enough for both of us to remind one another of where we were on the day that John Kennedy died. It is sad, really, that we had to remind him of what this day has so long stood for now, We even asked him what happened forty eight years ago this day, but he could not remember without our telling him. So much has happened since that day almost a half a century ago. And, so much of what has happened has not been really all that positive. It was John Kennedy’s urgings that created that day in July of 1969 when man first set foot on the moon and we usually still remember that day when it comes around in its turn each and every year. But, still yet, there was no mention yesterday of the man who set all of that in motion fifty years ago this year in May.
From May to November, and these are the precious days that I will spend with you, was a popular line from a once popular song that so many who remember those times still like to recite when they think of John F. Kennedy and the so brief time that he did get to spend as our nations and the free worlds leader.
It rained yesterday in southern Illinois just as it has on so many November 22nds since 1963. It rained in southern Illinois on the day that John Kennedy died on the beautiful Friday just after noon in Dallas. We stood for a seeming eternity in front of the high school where we were a freshman of fourteen years old as we awaited our brother to come away from the television set to come and pick us up so that we could watch the unfolding tragedy for ourselves. We are not sure that we have ever had a more lonely feeling than we had standing in front of that school on that now receding Friday afternoon. We avoided the downpour that Friday afternoon in 1963, but, we, along with all other members of the human race, have been subjected to a deluge of unavoidable change that has, so much of the time, not been the progress that so many had such high hopes of during that now so distant seeming time. Soon, as time relentlessly goes, there will be no one alive anymore to remember those days and that particular time. We remember the day in September of 2001 when the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City and we realize that there will also come a day when everyone who remembers that event so personally will also be gone away. So few are still around who remember December seventh, 1941 and practically all are gone who remember November eleventh, 1918.
We always try to remember these days but it has not always been so, even for us. It was on November 22, 1978 when we were a tourist in Washington D.C. and we visited John F. Kennedy’s grave and eternal flame at Arlington cemetery and we were jarred into awareness of the date by seeing the roses scattered across his grave by his family so early in the morning before anyone else arrived. It was a rainy day that time as well. And, we remember so many tombstones across so many cemeteries that have no one left to place any sort of commemoration on them for those now anonymous and departed souls.
They say that tears are such a cleansing thing and just perhaps the rain that seems to accompany us on these November days no matter where we go serves that function as well. Many cried when they found out that John “F. Kennedy had died so young and so full of promise and life. Some still cry over that today but their numbers are dwindling and the great promise of those times seems to be passing away so very quickly now. So many have never even had the glimmer of promise that those days seemed to provide for a world that was eager and ready for them with a generation also eager and ready to carry them to fruition. And, we wonder in some amazement at the thought that it may all so soon be so completely gone away. Almost as if it had never existed at all. And, we wonder just how much longer that flame at John Kennedy’s grave site will be allowed to remain lit as we recede into the dusk of a seemingly never ending and ominous night! So many questions and unfulfilled promises linger there around that flame and no answers appear in sight. And, eternity is such a long. long, time.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
| 
