Bonita Nussbaum

Paper 1 - MY SON

          We crossed the Potomac and made our way to Arlington Cemetery.  I was at once amazed at the rows and rows of simple markers, but I was only looking for one.  I knew from the map that we were approaching his grave and I was filled with nervousness anticipation.  It had been twenty-three years since I was last there, twenty-eight since he was killed.

          My mind wandered back to that day – June 6, 1968.  I was fourteen years old at a time when the world was going mad.  The country was splitting apart, culturally and politically: drugs, hippies, civil rights, anti-war demonstrations, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  In the midst of all this, he was my voice – a voice for the oppressed, a voice against poverty, a voice of hope.  Even at fourteen, I believed that he could change the world.  Then he was gone.

          As I approached his grave I saw only the single white cross, stark and alone.  I remembered the first time I saw it in 1973, five years after he died.  Then the grave had only the cross, now there was a small marble slab in front with his name.  What a contrast to his brother’s grave some twenty yards away with its massive slab and eternal flame.

          I remembered the days just after he died.  My family had never owned a television, but my father went out and bought one so I could watch the funeral.  “My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life,” his eulogist said.  “He should be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”  The train ride that took him from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to Arlington was nine hours delayed because of the masses of people that lined the track to honor him.  There were blacks and whites, Catholics and Protestants, rich and poor.  It was dark when he was laid to rest.

          I turned from his grave and saw familiar words on a stone retaining wall lining the pathway.  “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”  I felt pride that the words I hang in my classroom are the words his family chose to represent his life.

          I sat for a while on the bench and watched people as they came to his grave.  I wondered how many were even born when he lived.  I thought about how he touched my life and left an indelible mark, even though I only knew him through his words and his images.  I wondered if he really could have changed the world.

          I talked with my son on the phone last night.  He is a lot like me; he believes that each of us is capable of making a difference.  I listened to him talk about his experiences in Iowa, Washington, and Oregon working with the Howard Dean campaign.  I heard in his voice the same idealism and commitment to a cause larger than himself.  He is the future and my eyes fill with tears of pride to realize that a little bit of Robert Kennedy has gone through me to him.