That Suit

"If there is a single item that captures both the shame and the violence

that erupted that day, and the glamour and artifice that preceded it,

it is Jackie Kennedy’s bloodstained pink suit,

a tantalizing window on fame and fashion, her allure and her steely resolve,

 the things we know about her and the things we never quite will. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/fashion/jacqueline-kennedys-smart-pink-suit-preserved-in-memory-and-kept-out-of-view.html?ref=style

 

The Kennedys arrive in Dallas 11/22/63.

 The recognizable pink Chanel suit with matching pillbox hat.  It was a soft feminine touch on a day that would land like granite in our American hearts.

 

The NYTimes article which recently noted the blood stained suit's whereabouts joins the chorus of media outlets focusing on the five decade anniversary of JFK's assassination. The First Lady's well known suit has been packed away in a National Archives storage site in Maryland where it will be kept from public view until 2103.  This decision made by Caroline Kennedy in 2003, provides rare privacy to an otherwise overwhelmingly public family.

 

I used to dress my Barbie doll as Jackie Kennedy using colored tissues and leftover fabric pieces from my mother's sewing box.  I would tape and pin what appeared to my 7 year old brain to be striking replicas of the tailored skirts and dresses worn by the First Lady.  My guess is that her youth and beauty made her more reachable to my little girl sensibilities unlike Mamie Eisenhower or Lady Bird Johnson who seemed more grandma-like. 

 

I distinctly remember asking for pink colored Kleenex so my Barbie doll could be appropriately dressed in that sad November of 1963.  Playing with dolls was such a favorite pastime for me; something I did way past the acceptable age for such childhood fantasy.  When history slammed into our collective living rooms that year, one way it translated in this little girl's life was as Barbie morphing into Jackie in a pink Chanel suit.   
 

As a second grader in 1963 at the now shuttered St. Philomena parochial school, I have a crystal clear memory of hearing the news about the assassination.  Class was interrupted by the principal speaking over the school PA system. I was seated at my desk as the unusually shaky voice of Mother Pasquelina stated the President had been shot and killed.  There was silence and then some sniffling from a few classmates quick to feel the universal pang of sadness.  It is a stabbing, singular memory.

 

In the following days my family, like so many others, sat transfixed to the television reports.  Time seemingly stopped on 11/22/63.

 

My brother Vincent's birthday is 11/23.  The national mourning ran roughshod over his tenth birthday. His memory is one of a sadness that especially consumed the adults 
around his special day.  John Kennedy Jr.'s birthday was 11/25 - the day of his dad's funeral.  Days of gift wrapped grief collided with what should have been happier times.

I'm glad the Chanel suit is packed away, unseen for another 90 years.  While it may add allure to the iconic Jacqueline Kennedy, the deliberate privacy tenderly reminds us that loss is first a personal experience, even if you were the First Lady.