Posterity (32 page)

Using the word peace makes me rush to confess that if peace means peace of mind, I have this to an amazing degree compared to all the other people I know. I have always had this somehow. I have never been harried or extremely worried except for temporary specific causes. In a confused world I am confused, but I am not thrown into a panic by confusion. I am not unduly distressed by it. I can take confusion and imperfection in my stride.

All this brings me back to where we left off—my childhood. It is possible that there were many lucky accidents in my upbringing that were good for me. My strange disorderly unsystematic family may have developed in me a tolerance for disorder which makes it possible for me to live in a disorderly world, even though I crave another kind. But there is no other kind. The world is very much like my family, filled with people of unharnessed passions, illogical impulses, inconsistent religions and clashing philosophies. All these whirling atoms are held together loosely and kept going slowly in the same general direction by one element—love. You may substitute another word for this if you please. You may call it God or you may call it goodness. You may call it Seventh Day Adventism or Free Masonry or Democracy or Communism or the American Legion or the Doylestown sewing circle or Local 802—but it is the desire to be with a group of other people, all working with one another in an effort to do something which all consider a good thing to do. What one group considers a good thing to do may be thought the worst thing in the world by another group, but if you don't belong to a group that is doing something or thinks it is doing something, you haven't a chance. Within that group is the justification of that small atom that is you, and some day you hope to do something very fine which will make the group applaud you. The biggest and truest and most significant line in all nursery rhymes is a line in Little Jack Horner—“What a good boy am I!” That is what everybody wants to say to himself, but he can have little assurance of his belief unless it is endorsed by other members of his group. Everyone has this desire for approval. The trouble is that many people do not work hard enough to get it. Then they become unhappy paranoiacs, clinging for the life of their egos to their own self-approval, and blaming the rest of the world for not endorsing it.

This whole essay springs from what I have been telling you about my family and what I am going to tell you about them. In the light of the earnest and scientific approach that all the young people of your generation bring to the task of bearing and breeding and educating your young, my family and many families of that day, and indeed many families of today, seem like irresponsible maniacs, but all the science in the world is no good without this thing I have quickly and carelessly called love. There must be love, unselfconscious, spontaneous and unscientific, shining out of all the dusty corners of the disorderly household. And specifically, the little atom whirling around among millions of other atoms very like himself must be given the illusion that they are not so like himself, that he is something very special, worth promoting, worth perfecting, worth building up to that position of prominence and achievement where he can lie in his bed or stand on a hill or walk down the street and say to himself with conviction: “What a good boy am I.”

M
.
F
.
K
.
F
ISHER TO
N
ORAH
K
ENNEDY
B
ARR,
A
NNA
P
ARRISH, AND
M
ARY
K
ENNEDY
W
RIGHT

“I wish and want and hope to die in my own home.”

As a food aficionado and writer, in her more than twenty books and scores of articles, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher essentially told her readers, “Look, if you have to eat to live you may as well enjoy it.” She created a new genre for the written word and her work elevated the preparation and consumption of food from mere necessity to important and gratifying social occasion and opportunity for self-expression. She was tough and funny, tall and sometimes beautiful, and as the daughter of Rex Kennedy, a lifelong and fifth-generation newspaperman, from childhood she knew she would write. And write she did, but her adult life was more complicated than she ever expected—divorced, widowed, and divorced again—she evolved into a courageous mother who achieved nuch professionally and, by herself, raised two daughters.

As Fisher grew older she trained herself to remain detached from, yet keenly aware of, her own progressive aging. She “meant to work longer, and say more,” but by the 1980s her eyesight was failing and she was increasingly debilitated by arthritis and Parkinson's disease. At seventy-six years old, she wrote the following letter to her two daughters and her younger sister, Norah. She lived for another eight years, all the while working and writing as best she could.

[Last House, Glen Ellen, California]
February 9, 1984

To: Norah Kennedy Barr, Anna Parrish, and Mary Kennedy Wright . . .

I want to tell you what some of you may have to think about, since chronologically I'll not outlive any of you . . .

I wish and want and hope to die in my own home. Some of you may want to help me do this.

Rex Kennedy told us that he wanted to die in his own house, “at home.” It was difficult at times, and even painful and unpleasant, but we brought it off. And I must tell you that I myself feel that it was worth any physical and perhaps spiritual inconveniences I had to put up with for a time . . . quarrelling nurses, sad and sometimes scary character-changes in my father. A few hours before Rex died, in a cosmic rage at finding himself only mortal . . . and I know he was frightened too . . . Dr. Bruff said, “You must keep in your mind that this is not your father, the man you have known.” This helped me accept the raging roaring old lion in his next-to-last hours, and the suspicious wily fox of perhaps five days before that. It was
not
Rex, really, or at least it was not the man I knew as my father and friend.

And this may happen with me, although I, and all of you, devoutly hope it will not, and that I can leave the scene easily.

BUT . . .

I want to leave it either by myself or with a few friends, HERE, or with you.

I know that nurses, either RN or “practical,” are hard to find and hard to live with. But they exist. And the situation by the time they are needed is a temporary one. As for the expense, they cost no more than the kind of rest-home or nursing-home you might find, that you would want me to end my life in. There are a few, perhaps, but we all know that most of them are simply living graveyards . . . and that living corpses are not often treated as decently as dead ones.

I hope to leave enough available cash to take care of such possible expenses. If there is not enough, you will simply have to borrow for more. It will be worth the doing, believe me, a few years along . . .

As for the personal physical side, I feel sad if you must try to carry out this wish of mine. I apologize to you now, for whatever trials it may put you through, and I thank you with all my heart. Between and among you, there will be enough energy and love to see the thing through. It may mean a temporary displacement, and it may even change the lives of your children or your friends, but I believe that it will not be bad, eventually. And meanwhile, I'll send this little manifesto to you, and then leave it lay where Jesus flang it.

What it comes down to is that I hope somebody will enable me to die in my own bed, if I do indeed need help then.

With love and thanks . . .

On June 22, 1992, Fisher died at home.

G
EORGE
H
ERBERT
W
ALKER
B
USH TO
H
IS
C
HILDREN

“Well, I'll be there ready when you are,
for there's so much excitement ahead . . .”

That George Bush, the forty-first president of the United States, has been a lifelong and prolific writer of emotive, warm, thoughtful, and humorous letters came as a surprise to many Americans. He was the president who led the country into war with Iraq and deftly presided over the end of the cold war, but while in office was often thought of as stiff and unfeeling. In hindsight George Bush himself realized there was a gulf between the public perception of him and the reality of his personality: “I'm convinced the American people didn't know my heartbeat,” he said. “I can't blame anybody but myself for that.”

He is a man who believes that the best way to lead, in any situation, is by example and he is a father who is always conscious of the example he sets for his family. In 1992, the day after he lost the presidential election, Bush directed himself in his diary, “Be strong, be kind, be generous of spirit, be understanding and let the people know how grateful you are.”

Here the seventy-four-year-old former president writes to his five grown children about himself and his advancing age. In less than two months, on election night 1998, his two sons George and Jeb were elected to the governorships of two of the largest states in the nation.

September 23, 1998

Dear Kids,

This letter is about aging. Not about the President's Conference on Aging and how we should play lawn bowling, get discounts at the movies, turn into skin-conscious sunblockers, take Metamucil and grow old gracefully. No it's about me, about what happened between last year and this, between being 73 and 74. It's interesting—well,
fairly
interesting to you maybe, therapeutic to me for I know I am getting older now.

Last year I could drop the anchor on Fidelity and worry only a little bit about falling off the bow. This year if Bill Busch or Neil isn't up there on the bow of Fidelity II to drop the anchor I can still do it; but I figure it's about a 75% chance that a wave will hit Fidelity, my balance will go and I'll be in the drink.

Last year I could fly fish on the end rocks at the Point, and not be too concerned about losing my balance. Oh, if I'd been casting at one target for a while way back in the summer of '97, my spike clad feet firmly placed on two rocks, and then I turned fast I'd feel a little—what's the word here—not “wobbly” but “unbalanced”—that's the feeling.

This year if I turn fast, I wobble. I recover as I go from rock to rock, but I look like one of the Wallenza brothers going across Niagara Falls. Arms in the air are more important this year.

In August I was floating down the Bow River near Calgary in a 14' open fishing boat—the kind with the bow that goes up—not high up but up enough to keep the water out if you hit some rapids. Well we pulled in for a shore lunch, and I couldn't bend my legs enough to get them over the freeboard.

You may have noticed that in Greece I leaned on the guys holding the rubber launch when we pulled into a beach or when in a chop I climbed back onto Alexander's gangway.

When I climb in or out of the Navigator I have to swing one leg in then lift the other with my hands. Last year—no problem!

Then there's memory. I'm still pretty good at faking it. “Well, I'll be darn, how in the heck are you?” or “long time no see!” or “What you been up to?” or if I want to gamble “How's your better half?” Careful of this last one at both 73 and 74 though. The better half crop is getting a little thinner. Death has claimed some “better halfs” and over the years some have been dumped.

But no question my memory is getting worse. I was introduced up in Calgary by a guy named Sandy. I thanked him—then near the end of the speech I wanted to mention him again, ad lib him in, but I couldn't remember whether it was Sandy or Randy—so I go “And let me again thank all of you and especially our great host” at which point I gestured toward the spot in the totally darkened hall to which I thought Sandy had repaired after introducing me. When the lights came on, my speech finished, there was Sandy right near where I had pointed. What a country!

Memory? A definite problem now. The twins invited friends from Biddeford Pool over to Walker's Point this summer. Mystery guests in a way for they'd leave one day midst warm embraces and farewells only to mysteriously reappear the next.

Jenna introduced me to them on Day 1 and on Day 2—then gave up on me when failing to recall names I kept saying “Biddeford Girls—I am sure glad you came back. How long are you going to be with us?” They were very nice about it, and after a week of seeing them eating here they wedged into my heart—always room for more nice kids.

Near the end of their tenure when I needled them “Hey Biddeford girls, glad to see you could make it for ice cream” I almost wish I hadn't seen them exchange that ‘who is this whacko?' look.

Sometimes humor works, it kind of obscures the memory thing. At a huge corporate gathering I had just met Kevin's wife. Kevin was my host and had been the question screener at a forum. When I went to bid farewell to Kevin and to his wife whose name suddenly escaped me I go “Kevin thanks a lot”—then patting his wife on the arm—a kind of farewell pat I go “You sure over married, Kevin old boy.” She never knew.

One last point on memory. I can remember things very clearly that happened a long time ago. The longer ago, it seems, the clearer my recall.

Examples:

I can vividly remember the bottom of my mother's feet. Yes, she played a much younger woman named Peaches Peltz in tennis back in 1935 or so. Peaches was smooth. Mum was tenacious. Mother literally wore the skin off the bottom of her feet. But I can't remember whom I played tennis with last week.

I remember Uncle Johnny Walker back about 1945 telling me that Mr. Frank Parker, then a distinguished NYC lawyer of around 50, liked to stand in a cold shower and let ice cold water hit him in the crack of his buttocks. But I can't remember with any clarity what Gorbachev told me in 1991, or what Kohl said when the wall came down in '89. Incidentally I don't like what Mr. Parker liked. Warm water there—sure, but icy cold water no way.