From Dallas, Texas

It's often been said that people of the right age remember where they were and what they were doing 60 years ago this month when they heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot.

Some were at their jobs on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, on the subway, at the beauty parlor, in cars listening to the radio, lingering in front of TV store windows. Some heard it by way of a jittery, local newscast delivering the news in real time, others as they saw the soap opera "As the World Turns" interrupted by a CBS bulletin from anchor Walter Cronkite.

About an hour after that bulletin, Cronkite said this: "From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o' clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago."

My mother was in our basement ironing clothes when she got a call from a friend that the president had been gunned down in broad daylight. When my dad came home, she recalled to me recently, they embraced and cried. 

I don't remember that particular moment of human solace; I was turning 4 in two months. But now, in my 60s, I know that embrace was about more than a fallen president. If it's true as historians say that America lost its innocence after the president was killed, it's also true that our little family unit would never be the same after our baby sister died at 3 months old in October of 1963.

But just as the country went on with a new president, we would soon have a new sister. She was named Angela because, well, she was a godsend - another baby girl. And it struck me to figure out recently that my mom must have been pregnant with her when Kennedy was killed and didn't yet know it; Angela was born 10 months after our sister died, nine months after the president.

The country went on, and so did my heartsick parents, coming together in grief to bring a new child into the world. And then two more. It's what we do when bad things happen; we go on. But that doesn't mean we forget.

Every October as I got older, I noticed my mom's spirits sag a bit. She never cared all that much for Halloween. But each autumn she would plant a bright, full mum at her baby's grave. She still does. 

The October the baby died would hurt for decades, years in which we would visit that grave without understanding the enormity of it and my mother would tell us the largest star in the sky was our lost sister. 

My mother and father had to bounce back after their loss; "I had other children to take care of," mom had always said. America had other things to do, too. But like our family, the country is reminded every fall of what happened on that Friday afternoon in Dallas, Texas. 

The day mom was ironing and got a call from a friend.