Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye

Hard to believe JFK’s inauguration was 50  years ago. I remember reaching out in the crowd to touch his shirtfront the night before that squeaker of a victory. We all have such vivid memories of him if we were awake back then. I mean his picture was everywhere, the picture you see here, his official portrait, done by Bachrach of Boston who 30 years later did a portrait of me too. (I never looked like this really. I look like some kind of a  younger Mother Superior in the era after nuns got out of the habit of habits.)But I study this portrait of “Jack” and it seems so familiar: that tan which we now know was the dark pigmenting that comes with Addison’s Disease; those squirrel cheeks he got from the steroids he was given to control his pain. (Go here to read the stunning array of drugs he took in the White House years as finally revealed after the death of Jackie.)I think of her today too and of how way too much has come to light about her man's many affairs for even the most loyal of us to believe he was ever a faithful husband. It was shameless, the way he had sex with young  women he didn't even know, all ushered in to “meet” this  charming  leader of the free world. When I think how readily  they submitted to him my blood boils and I silently hail Paula Jones who said no to Bill Clinton, then went out and told on him.At the time when news first started to leak out about his  ways no one knew much about addictions . We know about them now all right and a very good thing that is. What kind of pain was he running from that he had to medicate himself with encounter after encounter? What could his view of women have been that he could use them in this way? He can never enlighten us. His lips are sewn shut  inside the box within the vault under the earth on the slope of land near the onetime mansion of General Lee. Two of his three brothers now lie near him, all sons of a problematic father. Who knows what demons chase a person in life? There is peace at the end let us hope. Let us hope there is peace for us all.