Fact vs. Fiction

We all know by now, and maybe most did at the time, that the whole Camelot thing was a big farce. Playing the media to the hilt or people believing because they wanted to believe, either way, it was a fake. That was no happy marriage. God only knows how many women he slept with while in the White House. A man of power can get what he wants… Power the Aphrodisiac I’ve been told. I see pictures of JFK and I don’t think, ‘Great family man, he really loved his wife.” I think, “A man molded for this position and he cheated on his wife.” Infidelity appears to be the norm in our society. Other people’s relationships are not my business nor my problem; I really don’t care what other people do. I will say that I have always believed and continue to believe, that infidelity is a symptom of a bigger problem MOST of the time. In their case, maybe it was just that he was a self centered egotistical jerk face. Thank God we didn’t have AIDS back then. That would have been a real bitch to have a First Lady contract AIDS. Trust me, I don’t envision JFK wearing a rubber. He was the President. Contraception was HER problem.

On the other hand we have Nancy and Ronald Reagan. That wasn’t fake. That was the real McCoy. A man so in love with his wife. He may not have been the best father, but he loved his wife. And she was a woman truly in love with her husband. Sure, Jackie would have stayed by her man if he had lived long enough to contract Alzheimer’s. Jackie seemed to be made of some sort of resilience; the type that enabled her to continue to do what had to be done. But Nancy, she was different towards her spouse. A media that had nothing nice to say about her or him as individuals, never doubted their devotion to each other.

And that is what is hurting my heart so as I watch Nancy go through the steps of her grief.

I no longer see a First Lady, steely look of determination as the press ‘dissed her husband, hair on the back of her neck standing on end as she refused to let the nasty media get them down. I see a grandmother now. I see a frail woman. I see a widow. I see a woman who has been grieving for a long time. A woman who woke up every morning for the last few years, watching her beloved deteriorate, helpless to make it stop, remembering how things were, and then steeling herself for the new day. Every day. For years. I see a woman who is at the end of her journey, probably relieved her other half is no longer suffering, as the man she married had checked out long ago, yet feeling more pain and loneliness than even she could have anticipated. I see an elderly woman now, whose children are trying to guide her, stand beside her, and help her through something she truly must endure alone. I see a woman I want to hug.

I am saddened for her. There is a movie I watched in college, “When Harry Met Sally”. At the end of the movie there is this line that I am going to get completely wrong, but goes something like, “When you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to begin now.” What do you do when that person is gone? What do you do when the person who grew to become your other half is no longer? What do you do when you don’t smell him in the morning? When you don’t hear his voice anymore? When you don’t hear him puttering around the house?

You are then doomed to walk the face of the Earth alone. For the rest of your life. And that is where Nancy Reagan is. There are throngs of people, well wishers, and such. Millions of people outpouring their sympathy and she walks amongst them… yet she is alone.

This was not Camelot. This was not something the media made up. This was something that all of us wish for, yet so few truly attain. This was the real. This was true love. Media be damned.