IS IT STILL CALLED MOURNING SO MANY YEARS LATER?

LOST remembers the morning of June 5, 1968, waking up in nearly the same exuberant state which existed the night before, just before fatigue got the best of a seven year old boy struggling to stay awake to watch the triumphant speech of the newest American hero. At that age, 11:30 pm was pushing the envelope a bit too much, even for this kind of excitement.

I awoke to find my brother, sitting at the edge of his bed, looking older and more ashen than I had ever seen him before or since. He looked as though he’d been sitting there all night. It was a strange position to find him in, since I knew that he and one of our older brothers had been in the Ambassador that night, sharing in the excitement, the joy that reflected their volunteer efforts along with so many others. My brother’s rebuke to my rekindled mirth. "yeah, with a bullet in his head," spoken soullessly, with nearly no affect, thudded into my brain, and still hangs in my memory like some fetid weed, too onerous to approach, let alone remove.

In these heady days of "American Idol," and "All-Anna-Nicole-all-the-time," Robert Kennedy is almost a forgotten man in mainstream America. For some who do remember, he is little more than a footnote on a page about his brother's presidency, for others, he’s a cameo appearance in a TV movie about Hoffa, or Joe McCarthy, or the Cuban Missile Crisis. A handful of others seem eager to believe the most salacious details about his personal life that some hate-mongering "journalists" can conjure up. Even the somber anniversary of his murder has been obscured by the death of the conservative's icon, Ronald Reagan, who himself lived a full, long and richly celebrated life.

Yet whether remembered or un-recalled, revered or reviled, Robert Kennedy was a real-life story of redemption, a sort of modern day Ebeneezer Scrooge. He was himself transformed by tragedy, from a "ruthless" pursuer of perceived wrong-doers and those who would malign or antagonize his brother, to a statesman who cared about the poor, the impoverished, the hopeless in ways that few politicians have since. He made enemies among many progressives of his time for declining to immediately challenge LBJ for the 1968 nomination as well as Johnson’s disastrous course in Vietnam, then jumping into the presidential race only after Eugene McCarthy showed Johnson's vulnerability, and the public's disgust with the war.

Yet Robert Kennedy made up for lost time, and waged a passionate, if at times disorganized quest for the Presidency. Given what happened to his brother, his campaigning was absolutely fearless. Many of his campaign events featured him standing on the back of open cars, riding slowly through neighborhoods of exuberant people, eager to touch him and shake his hand. So many seemed convinced that his spirit and drive, and energy and charisma would help carry this country out of the Vietnam quagmire, and on to better things and greater prosperity.

To watch the footage of the somber funeral train snaking from New York to Washington that bleak Saturday, and view the sea of humanity turned out to pay respect was profoundly poignant. These witnesses to tragedy tossed aside individual differences and instead stood united solely by the depth of their collective grief. In so doing they showed appreciation for what the man was able to inspire in millions - an ability to emphasize common goals over factors that seek to divide. Scant few national leaders have succeeded in this effort to any significant degree since.

Tonight, if you are so inclined, say a prayer for the soul of this decent man who was ripped away from us. Say one for our Nation, so that we will one day soon be blessed with a bevy of public servants with Robert Kennedy's aspirations to social justice and yearning to improve our country as a whole. May they find us - or we find them, soon.