So I have updated and revised a book of poetry that was first published in the 1970s. The poems where written over the turbulent decades of the 60s and 70s.
One of the ones I added, is titled "But a Pale Shadow" and it's about apathy. It was inspired by the following:
In November of 1963 my husband, Ken, and I were living in Plantation, Florida just outside of Fort Lauderdale. We had two children, Cathy who was a toddler and Scott, a baby. On this day I was attending a college class while Ken's mother, who was visiting from Toledo, stayed with the children.
Suddenly someone burst into the room to say that the president of the United States, John Kennedy, had been shot while in a motorcade in Texas. The room immediately erupted into chaos. I grabbed my stuff and headed for the parking lot, along with several other students and teachers. All I could think about was my children. While it may not seem rational that they would be in harms way, I didn't know how this news would effect my mother in law. So I raced home.
They were fine. Ken's mother had the television on but she was totally unconcerned. Not knowing her well at this point I was having trouble comprehending why she wasn't grasping the magnitude of this event.
That evening we were to have dinner with some executives of the international company Ken worked for. Of course we were struggling with our feelings and didn't want to go but Ken's mother insisted that it was the right thing to do.
So we went. While the afternoon traffic was bumper to bumper with folks trying to get somewhere, mostly because they were stunned and not knowing what was happening in our world, now there was no traffic.The usually busy, upscale restaurant was almost empty. But the company execs were all there and we sat through an evening of eating and drinking, like they didn't have a care in the world.
I was deeply ashamed of myself for being there. A few months later we left our lovely home and Ken's prestigious work and we headed into an entirely new life. It was hard. But we never looked back.
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