On the day Jack Kennedy died, two literary institutions also left us.
Aldous Huxley and C.S. "Jack" Lewis had the great misfortune of dying on the day JFK was shot, meaning that a nation mourning the assassination of its president had perhaps fewer tears to shed for, and less time to reflect on, the lives of Lewis and Huxley.
Since then, of course, the post mortes have been many and grand, as has been the case for Ted Kennedy.
In among the many connections between Ted Kennedy and this country is one that deals little and inseparably with his legacy.
(Images courtesy here and here, respectively)
Two scenes in Jack Lewis' most famous book did not spring out of whole cloth in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but neither did the notion of improving lives begin with Kennedy.
And as Lewis embraced the idea of children going around on great, big adventures free from their parents, he gave them respect, and he gave them agency -- a fancy word for saying they determined their destiny through their decisions and actions, not through what their parents decided they would do.
And so with Ted Kennedy, who worked for 47 years to empower people to make the decisions best for themselves and their families.
This is the first of the two passages that to me capture the spirit of Teddy:
As soon as the wood was silent again Susan and Lucy crept out onto the open hill-top. The moon was getting low and thin clouds were passing across her, but still they could see the shape of the Lion lying dead in his bonds. And down they both knelt in the wet grass and kissed his cold face and stroked his beautiful fur -- what was left of it -- and cried till they could cry no more. And then they looked at each other and held each other's hands for mere loneliness and cried again; and then again they were silent. At last Lucy said,
"I can't bear to look at that horrible muzzle. I wonder, could we take it off?"
So they tried. And after a lot of working at it (for their fingers were cold and it was now the darkest part of the night) they succeeded. And when they saw his face without it they burst out crying again and kissed it and fondled it and wiped away the blood and the foam as well as they could. And it was all more lonely and hopeless and horrid than I know how to describe.
"I wonder, could we untie him as well?" said Susan presently. But the enemies, out of pure spitefulness, had drawn the cords so tight that the girls could make nothing of the knots.
I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been -- if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears in you -- you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again. At any rate that was how it felt to these two. Hours and hours seemed to go by in this dead calm, and they hardly noticed that they were getting colder and colder. But at last Lucy noticed two other things. One was that the sky on the east side of the hill was a little less dark than it had been an hour ago. The other was some tiny movement going on in the grass at her feet. At first she took no interest in this. What did it matter? Nothing mattered now! But at last she saw that whatever-it-was had begun to move up the upright stones of the Stone Table. And now whatever-they-were were moving about on Aslan's body. She peered closed. They were grey little things.
"Ugh!" said Susan from the other side of the Table. "How beastly! They are horrid little mice crawling over him. Go away, you little beasts." And she raised her hand to frighten them away.
"Wait!" said Lucy, who had been looking at them more closely still. "Can you see what they're doing?"
Both girls bent down and stared.
"I do believe--" said Susan. "But how queer! They're nibbling away at the cords!"
"That's what I thought," said Lucy. "I think they're friendly mice. Poor little things -- they don't realize he's dead. They think it'll do some good untying him."
It was quite definitely lighter by now. Each of the girls noticed for the first time the white face of the other. They could see the mice nibbling away; dozens and dozens, even hundreds, of little field mice. And at last, one by one, the ropes were all gnawed through.
The sky in the east was whitish by now and the stars were getting fainter -- all except one very big one low down on the eastern horizon. They felt colder than they had been all night. The mice crept away again.
The girls cleared away the remains of the gnawed ropes. Aslan looked more like himself without them. Every moment his dead face looked nobler, as the light grew and they could see it better.
In the wood behind them a bird gave a chuckling sound. It had been so still for hours and hours that it startled them. Then another bird answered it. Soon there were birds singing all over the place.
It was quite definitely early morning now, not late night.
"I'm so cold," said Lucy.
"So am I," said Susan. "Let's walk about a bit."
They walked to the eastern edge of the hill and looked down.
[...]
At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise -- a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant's plate.
[...]
The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the two girls, rushing back to the Table.
"Oh, it,s too bad," sobbed Lucy; "they might have left the body alone."
"Who's done it?" cried Susan. "What does it mean? Is it magic?"
"Yes!" said a great voice behind their backs. "It is more magic." They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
[...]
"Oh, children," said the Lion, "I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!" He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table. (pp. 182-185)
Because of how books become movies, this nine-minute clip has the spirit of that scene and the one to come, if not how they went down in the book, and juxtaposed against the battle instead of preceding it:
Aslan did not need the mice to chew him free of the ropes. But that's not what matters. What matters is that those girls' faith in their Lion is made stone-solid after the night they spend with him.
Similarly, that Ted Kennedy will not be returning to us via Stone Table magic is not the point. The point is that we have his example -- taking one success as the starting point for another, and another, and another --
to use as our model and rallying point.
Yes, we are mourning now. But regardless of your faith, whether you believe he is destined for another life or the same earthly home we all end up buried in, we have far too much to celebrate for something like death to singularly occupy our minds.
For Teddy has given us victories that allow for more of the same. We can do more, we can expect more, we can require more because of what he fought to make the accepted rather than the exception.
Yes, he is physically gone. But tell me you won't be celebrating -- if not, perhaps, as Aslan celebrated -- when we win.
And here, then, is the second of the scenes:
"What an extraordinary place!" cried Lucy. "All those stone animals -- and people too! It's -- like a museum."
"Hush," said Susan, "Aslan's doing something."
He was indeed. He had bounded up to the stone lion and breathed on him. Then without waiting a moment he whisked around -- almost as if he had been a cat chasing its tail -- and breathed also on the stone dwarf, which (as you remember) was standing a few feet from the lion with his back to it. Then he pounced on a tall stone dryad which stood beyond the dwarf, turned rapidly aside to deal with a stone rabbit on his right, and rushed on to two centaurs. But at that moment Lucy said,
"Oh, Susan! Look! Look at the lion."
I expect you've seen someone put a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny streak of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper. It was like that now. For a second after Aslan had breathed upon him the stone lion looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back - then it spread -- then the color seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of paper -- then, while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair. Then he opened a great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a prodigious yawn. And now his hind legs had come to life. He lifted one of them and scratched himself. Then, having caught sight of Aslan, he went bounding after him and frisked around him, whimpering with delight and jumping up to lick his face.
Of course the children's eyes turned to follow the lion, but the sight they saw was so wonderful that they soon forgot about him. Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum, it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colours; glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of the deadly silence the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelping, barking, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.
"Oh!" said Susan in a different tone. "Look! I wonder -- I mean, is it safe?"
Lucy looked and saw that Aslan had just breathed on the feet of the stone giant.
"It's all right!" shouted Aslan joyously. "Once the feet are put right, all the rest of him will follow."
[...]
"Now for the inside of this house!" said Aslan. "Look alive, everyone. Up stairs and down stairs and in my lady's chamber! Leave no corner unsearched. You never know where some poor prisoner may be concealed." (pp. 187-88)
The parallels are at once obvious and subtle, as is the case with all great literature.
There is the image of an lion, mane and all, breathing life into the tallest of creatures -- the giant.
For all the giant's physical grandeur and towering presence, it is the breath of a lion -- not seen in anyone's memory -- that restores him.
Yet that same breath is the stuff of life for all creatures great and small. And when we, via Susan and Lucy, first see Aslan restoring those lives, it is not a fierce cavalry or sharpshooting artillery Aslan is reviving but woodland creatures -- ready to do battle, to be sure, but ready first to live again.
We know this because these animals are celebrating rather than rallying in military formation. First and foremost, this is a celebration of life -- only natural, given how many creatures have been restored to life.
And once Aslan has raised those who were outside, the job does not end; the job changes. For now there are still others to rescue -- for the fight ahead, to be sure, but first because it is the right thing to do.
Jack Lewis gave us in Aslan (one of the three great characters in that series, along with Lucy and Reepicheep) a complete character.
He has his somber, deeply grave moments. He has his hardworking moments. And then there's the part where he, Susan and Lucy play on and around the Stone Table the White Witch thought could contain him.
It is that totality of character -- what he will do next is worth doing, but it is also unpredictable -- that does two things to Aslan:
- It makes him fun for kids to read about (tell me you never, in your more innocent days, fancied playing with big ol' animals)
- It allows us (and the characters we love) to more deeply breathe in, to more completely experience, the depth of statements and actions like the one where Aslan, having seen Lucy tend to Edmund's wounds, tells her to move on to the other wounded and then admonishes her thus when she protests:
Daughter of Eve, others also are at the point of death. Most more people die for Edmund?
There is, meanwhile, the deep and human symbolism of the smallest among us doing our part to free, to help, the God figure, because we can and because it is the right thing to do.
Think of the scores of people Ted Kennedy gave agency during his Senate tenure.
I have an adopted cousin from El Salvador. Two of my relatives had cancer -- one in his 80s. I took an education class that focused on people with disabilities. One of my sisters aspired to play college soccer.
You'll never meet any of these people. They're faceless Americans -- people you (and Ted Kennedy) never met.
But Teddy didn't have to meet them to help them in ways they probably have not fully understood. Maybe they never will. Maybe they're too busy assuming the world they were born into rather than discovering what it used to be.
The opportunities we grew up assuming we'd have -- thinking it only natural to have -- are part of Ted Kennedy's legacy. I thought it only natural that my cousin Rafi be part of our family. He's ... my cousin. Having him removed from my life would seem as unnatural and ridiculous as removing any of my other cousins.
What will Rafi be in 20 years?
What will my aunt who beat breast cancer be doing in five years?
Will one of my sister's students go on to play a sport in college?
We can ask those questions, expecting proud answers, because of Ted Kennedy. And it is the questions whose answers are proud possibilities that bring with them in the best results -- where the answer is what we make of it, not what we have to settle for.
And for as much as the Christian symbolism is evident in this and others of Lewis' works, these books were not written for Christians.
Specifically, they were written for Jill, about whom more here.
But again, in the grand tradition of the best literature, the books are accessible to nearly everyone. If you can read, you can read these books (which have been translated into at least 41 languages). I read them when I was 6.
And just so, Ted Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts, but his loyalty was to Americans, not his home state. A nation mourns because a nation has lost its senator.
There is one final scene in this book that can ... calm us, appease us, even please us:
Then he said,
"We have a long journey to go. You must ride on me." And he crouched down and the children climbed up on to his warm, golden back, and Susan sat first, holding on tightly to his mane and Lucy sat behind holding on tightly to Susan. And with a great heave, he rose underneath them and then shot off, faster than any horse could go, downhill and into the thick of the forest. (pp. 185-86)
And after they've ridden on the lion's back, he of course wastes no time reviving all those stone creatures you read about above.
The analogy is twofold. First, more intimately, is the analogy begun when Caroline Kennedy, back last August, told us of how Uncle Teddy had walked so many Kennedy girls down the aisle (five minutes in):
Second is the analogy begun when Kennedy took office:
That he would, by act of God or Congress, make people's lives better.
We have all of us over however many of the last 47 years ridden on Ted Kennedy's broad (if injured) back. For some, the ride started scarcely more than a decade ago. For others, the ride was begun when we had already a decade of life without his persistence and love of humanity.
And in the wake of his passing, we must learn to lean on each other's backs and fronts and sides and whatever other parts are available and for the leaning on, because even as we wait for another great American to make his or her place and stature known and broad enough for a nation -- for nations -- to feel that same comfort, we must find something, anything to take its place, if only for an hour.
We may, and we will, weep more, lament more, sit deflated more.
And for all that our prolonged grief is justified -- and to each of us, that process is as it must be -- I have one final thought for you as we struggle to remember the good in the face of the bad:
Today and for as many tomorrows as any of us has, we remember Ted Kennedy for the breaths and lives he gave us. We remember him for helping us make our lives extraordinary -- for making the extraordinary expected.
We remember him for changing this country such that the accepted is accepted, not on the path to acceptance.
We remember him for taking a victory as not the end but one more step on the path to the end, to the greater good -- to the greatest good.
And now, his time in the Senate having ended directly -- his legacy being made of stuff that will outlast all of us -- it is to us to take the life he breathed into us and, bit by bit, secure for him and all others this last triumph.
For even as the lion has roared his last, let nobody underestimate the willingness of his legion of followers, we mice, to chew, bite and scratch our way to what Aslan wanted for all of His creations:
The dignity of life.
Like what you've read? Don't tip me. I don't want your tips.
8:55 in:
How will our fight end?
Contact your senator(s) about health care reform and other progressive causes -- causes Ted Kennedy made his life's work.
Get after your congressional representation for the same reason.
We determine our fate.