InsaneJournal

watching the funeral
I am having a terrible allergy attack. And my entire torso hurts too-I can't laugh, don't make me. It HURTS. ETA: Not that anything very funny has happened today, today was rotten in a way unrelated to this post, but I'm just saying, breathing too hard hurts.

I got a phone call last night with an unfamiliar area code. I get phonecalls from strangers sometimes who are under the impression I am a limo service. My mother said "that's a D.C area code".

I said "I don't know anyone from D.C. Maybe it's another person looking for a limo. I wonder why they're calling a Boston area limo serv- OHHHH."


They are holding the memorial service in the big, wood paneled lecture hall that they usually hold the Kennedy Library Forums in. This is the secular memorial service for his political acquaintences. There will be, or has already been, a big Catholic mass. Both were invitation only, all comments that follow are based on my viewing of it on tv.

(Nellie, being Nellie, watched it with me).

Joe Biden can't seem to find his seat, wandering around blocking the camera. News announcer "And Vice President Joe Biden has arrived".

Random camera pan to Jesse Jackson.

Judgg Gregg (NH Senator) is apparently there. Not that I'd know, I don't know what he looks like.

A multiracial gospel choir singing "God Bless America". Really beautiful if slightly wobbly in places.

The priest who did the short, ecumenical opening sermon has a brogue.

Guy I don't know singing "Love Changes Everything". Chris Dodd?

Governor Deval Patrick ("my grandmother used to say to no one in particular, 'I love me some Kennedy').

Really nice speech from McCain (it's a non partisan funeral-heh, there is a speech later by Orrin Hatch).

Cute Ken Burns documentary.



John Kerry speech.

Orrin Hatch is reading an original poem he wrote for Kennedy.

Brian Stokes Mitchell sings "To Dream the Impossible Dream". This was the campaign theme song for the RFK presidential campaign. One of Bobby's kids picked it out when Bobby was running.

Mayor Menino. His accent is so hilarious but my chest hurts and it's a funeral so I will not make fun of him.

Aaaand ABC cut out at the end of the Mayor's speech, so I guess I don't get to see the rest.

Things I didn't know about Ted Kennedy: He was an amature painter (apparently quite good). He was knighted. He volunteered as a "reading partner" to under privileged Boston children.

Politicians are so funny- they are always able to work in mentions of their platforms and achievments even while eulogizing someone else. They have been very good at stressing the health care reform issue every chance they get (not that there's anything wrong with that). This is an old fashioned political Boston Irish Wake, only minus all the drinking. Means people are here to network, ala The Last Hurrah* as much as they are to say goodbye.



People keep asking "Who will be the Kennedy patriarch now?" And on one level, it's a pretty stupid question, because the answer is obvious. It's the man currently speaking, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II (he's II even though technically he's III)- he is the eldest male now, if you're gonna insist that it must be the eldest male (but this is a new generation, like my own family, less insistent on uniting behind a single male authority figure). They usually call Teddy the "patriarch" because he was father and surrogate father to almost 29 fatherless kids.

But I think when people say "who will be the patriarch now?" They do not mean "who will lead the Kennedy family?"

They mean, who will lead us? As in, the Boston Irish have lost their chieftain. A role not neccessarily hereditary (or age or gender specific). There were 20,000 people in line to see the body on Thursday and this morning- a three or four hour wait, with people still in line at three a.m.


**The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor is easily one of the best novels of the Boston Irish experience.