my usual ride from the rectory to the chancery presented a startling, if reassuring, example of our incredibly resilient system of government. Motoring past 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there were no crowds, demonstrations, nor protests — merely two gardeners, raking leaves, on the White House lawn. The sight recalled the excited, worried questions that I’d encountered in Rome a few days earlier: “Is it a Communist coup?” “Will there be an attempt to overthrow the government?” Despite our national broken heart, the machinery of democracy neither fell apart nor ground to a halt, providing, instead, one of the finest hours in our national history.
Thank you note from Jacqueline B. Kennedy
Reinterment of Babies
Nine days after her husband’s funeral, I got a call from Jackie who was still living in the White House. She had decided to bring the bodies of the children whom she had lost — a stillborn daughter in 1956 and Patrick, who died three days after his birth in August of 1963 — from the Kennedy Family cemetery in Hyannis, Massachusetts, to join their father in Arlington Cemetery.
“Could you be ready on Wednesday (December 4),” she asked, “for the reinterment of the bodies of our two babies at Arlington?”
“Certainly.”
“All right,” Jackie said. “It will be very secret. An Army staff car will pick you up at the rectory. The driver will know where to take you but not why you’re there. Expect him about eight o’clock.”
Jackie was insistent that only a very small group attend the ceremony: her mother, Janet Auchincloss; sister, Lee Radziwill; and three or four other close friends. Though I thought about suggesting she increase the number, I decided against it. A larger ceremony, recalling Jack’s so-recent funeral, might be too hard on her. And, of course, I told no one, not even Archbishop O’Boyle. At the appointed hour the car arrived, and I got in with the driver. “Do you know where to take me?” “Yes sir.” Heading towards Arlington, I asked the young soldier where he was from. “I don’t like talking about it,” he replied haltingly. “I’m not proud. I’m from Dallas.”
Reaching our rendezvous, just outside the gates of Arlington Cemetery, I found Jackie, Lee, and the few friends who could fit in a limousine (Caroline and John were left back at the White House). Getting into her car, I drove with Jackie to the Kennedy plot. “Since I wanted to keep this secret,” she explained, “I’ve spread the rumor that the reinterment will be tomorrow at noon.” (Her plan worked.)
Driving as close as possible to where Jack now lay, we parked and got out. The sight of two such tiny, white caskets (holding such tiny, little bodies) was truly heart-wrenching. Before starting the ceremony, Jackie and I placed each on the ground near her husband’s fresh grave. Seeing the three — father, daughter, son — back together again, albeit in death, was a stark reminder of the Herculean effort made by their parents to bring these babies to term. Both Kennedys desperately wanted more children and, losing these dear, little ones, had only increased the value of the two who survived. Though this tender scene cried out for soliloquy — conscious of Jackie’s fragile emotional condition — I decided to offer only the prescribed, short prayers of the ceremony.
When we were finished, Jackie’s sigh was deep and audible. Turning to me, she began talking as if her life depended on it — which perhaps it did. In a little under two weeks, the world as this courageous thirty-four-year-old woman knew it had spun out of control on its axis. That she was even here tonight, able to momentarily put aside her own exquisite suffering to bring together her deceased family in their final resting place, was nothing short of a miracle. Trying to understand, to come to terms with this senseless tragedy, would take a lot of talking — and I was more than happy to listen.
Walking back to her limousine, she asked if she could have the ritual book and stole that I’d used for the service. As I gladly handed them over, they seemed to unleash a torrent of spiritual concerns that only a priest could possibly help her work through: Why had God let this happen? What could possibly be the reason? Jack had so much more to give, was just hitting his stride. What was our destiny in heaven? Did I think he was there? How would the children ever understand? What should she tell them?
Eventually the conversation turned more personal. How was she to carry on? With the public’s feelings about her, how would she ever be able to live even a semblance of a normal life? She didn’t disdain those who tried to see and touch her, as if doing so would somehow secure a souvenir of the President. She understood that she was forever destined to have to deal with public opinion, the differing, not always flattering, feelings toward her. But she did not want to be a public figure. In one pull of a trigger, her identity as both wife and First Lady had been wiped out. And though she appreciated the good will and love being lavished on her, she desperately wanted to be private, someone whose character would be shaped by herself and her family. Already, however, it was clear that the world viewed her, not as a woman, but as a symbol of its own pain, expecting her to carry a torch not of her own making.
The more she talked, the more that Jackie’s real feelings surfaced, her comments frank and to the point. Particularly galling, she confided, was the public’s surprise at her stoicism while preparing — and during — the funeral. Why had so many columnists marveled at her composure? It was the least she could do for Jack. He would have expected nothing less. Given the presence of her mother and sister, I thought it might be more appropriate if she and I, privately, continued our conversation at my rectory or the White House. But Jackie was undeterred. “I don’t like to hear people say that I am poised and maintaining a good appearance,” she said, resentfully. “I am not a movie actress. I am a Lee … of Virginia.” Just then, in a far gloaming, the imposing statue of General Robert E. Lee came into view, a fitting reminder that those with Lee’s blood in their veins did not crumble in the face of adversity.
It was a strength she would need more than ever. Jacqueline Kennedy, America’s most glamorous First Lady, was now the most famous widow — and single mother — on the planet. Yet even as she mourned the end of her old life, she was determined to be in full control of creating a new, secure one for her children and herself. Besides grappling with the death of a man whom I believe that she truly and deeply loved — who literally died in her arms, his blood and brain matter spattered on her lady-like white gloves — the sheer rawness of profound loss was finally beginning to set in.
That evening, as we strolled together through the beautiful if melancholy reality of Arlington, death was much on her mind — not only that of her husband, but also the children they had conceived, and lost, together. More urgently than ever before, any kind of afterlife — the Church’s view as well as her own — weighed heavily. Having been traumatically, involuntarily wrenched from her known reality, Jackie Kennedy was suddenly faced with the stark reality of her next chapter: Life after Jack. Life alone.
Our conversation that evening marked the beginning of many such discussions between Jackie and me. Aside from our separate, if newer relationship, her trust in me sprang from the knowledge that Jack also set store in my counsel. As a result, I was one of the few people to whom she could turn to express the desolation and despair felt over the loss of her husband. In the months following the assassination, Jackie frequently put her agony and confusion down on paper in handwritten letters. While candidly describing her tumult of emotions, her words always reconfirmed a deep love for her husband, the loneliness without him.
Moreover, they illustrate the degree to which her life had been, inextricably, intertwined with his. Jack was her future. Having never realistically visualized an existence without him, she now faced an appalling emptiness. Even more importantly, her letters present a resounding refutation of the rumors and innuendo that the marriage of John and Jacqueline Kennedy was more one of convenience than affection. That is simply not the case — which is why, after much soul searching, I have decided to include some of her correspondence in this book. In the long run, these anguished notes prove, despite opinions to the contrary, that her husband’s infidelity had not irreparably harmed their marriage, that theirs was a relationship grounded in deep, emotional conviction until the very end. Moreover, Jackie’s letters reveal a tenderness