I NEVER UNDERSTOOD the full extent of why my mother related so much to Jackie Kennedy until the former First Lady’s death.
On the evening of May 19, 1994, my mother and I were at Jerry’s deli on Beverly Boulevard having dinner when the CNN broadcast on the TV screens announced that Jackie Kennedy had passed away.
My mother was in shock and began to cry.
My mom was four years older than Jackie Kennedy, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy touched her deeply when it happened increasingly, so in the coming years. They were both widows with very young children.
My dad passed away two months before I was born, leaving my mom a widow now with three young children. My sister was four, and my brother was two when I was just born. And, on a larger stage, there was Jackie with her son John John and daughter Caroline who were three and six years old.
Where Jackie was a widow at 34 years of age, my mom was a widow at 28 years old.
As Jackie made her way through her life with being a widow, so did my Mom.
When Jackie remarried an older man, so had my mother. Where Jackie Kennedy’s second husband was 23 years older than her, my stepdad was 27 years older than my mom.
My mom’s shock that night at Jackie’s death became a big thing. And when they later broadcast her funeral, my mom and I watched it all on TV in my apartment in West Hollywood.
In life you look towards anyone and especially someone in the public eye that you admire and that you feel similar too. That is what drives so many people to follow celebrities today on social media. You want to feel that “yes I am just like them” and “they’re just like me” and ‘we have so many things in common.”
My mother probably only had Jackie Kennedy to seek this alliance with because who back then knew anyone who was suddenly a widow at such a young age?
Where most mothers in their late 20s or early 30s were connecting with other married mothers back then, for my mom there was only Jackie Kennedy who had the same similar fate at the time.
My mom saw Jackie Kennedy as a hero and a survivor. If Jackie could go on ,then so could my mom.
This sisterhood my mom felt only became apparent to me that night when our former First Lady suddenly passed away.
My mom cried at the loss that perhaps only another young widow could understand.
Jerome Cleary is a columnist for LAMonthly.org and lives in West Hollywood. He can be reached at jeromecleary@aol.com.
