We Must Be Kind

Little sweetheart, I was watching a documentary the other night on Netflix. It's about the 60's and an entire segment of it was about JFK. There was an enormous amount of footage I had never seen before and one sequence has stayed with me now for days. It's news reports from the streets on New York as people listen to car and portable radios, gathered around on the sidewalk trying to hear news after word has come out the President has been wounded in Dallas.

There's a very kind, shy and altogether lovely older woman there among them who the reporter approaches. She's listening with such quiet care and worry, my little sweetheart, and the reporter asks her what she thinks. She says something very quietly, terribly concerned and then, full of love, unguardedly, unexpectedly, exclaims "we have the same birthday!" And then smiling through her fears, "I'm just crazy about him."

Moments later in the film, after they've shown the famous sequence when Cronkite confirms the President's passing, they cut back to the street scene where the same news is coming over the car radio. That same crowd is gathered around and that nice old lady is close by too. At that moment as the news can be heard, there is a collective gasp, and the poor lady reels backward, literally jumping, as though she's been struck. She shrinks back into the thick of the crowd on the sidewalk, surrounded yet all alone, so very alone, and weeps.

My little sweetheart, people are good. People are so very lovely and kind and excited in wonderful guileless ways about things that touch their lives. And we are all so terribly terribly fragile. You taught me so much, my darling. And this is one of those things. We must be kind. In every way we can, with every chance we get, we must be kind to one another. We're all hurting. And we simply must be kind. And when we do show kindness, our hearts are one - mine flies to you, feels your touch and I know I will be with you forever because in that instant I am.

That nice lady, so very hurt, broken with sorrow, inconsolable -my heart goes out to her too in this moment captured before we were even born. I think it's meant to. Maybe she's even passing you by as I write this. Maybe wherever we go we feel it when someone, even someone we've never known, thinks of and feels for us. May it be so. May I love the way you taught me to, the way you taught and grew my heart. May we love one another. Love has no limits. It is boundless. May I act in love. I know it redounds to and reaches you.

Give that lovely woman a hug for me, little sweetheart. Tell her that your sweetheart, Michael, was just telling you about her. That he's so sorry. And that it's a little bit late - or maybe not because what is time? I know you know now. Maybe it's all going on all the time - but that he sends all the comfort and understanding and love in the world to her and all through you. Because you taught me, didn't you, little sweetheart? You showed me love. Until that day. Until that day! With love forever...