Visiting Dallas has been like a history lesson going all the way back to the 1960s when Kennedy was president, up to George W. Bush’s dismal presidency that ended just years ago. We visited the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum this morning and then the Sixth Floor Museum, the museum dedicated to the life, assassination, and legacy of John F. Kennedy. The museum is actually built on the same site and on the same floor where the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy multiple times as his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.

The whole exhibit was put together so well, with lots of details of the Kennedys’ lives and an almost minute by minute account of what happened on the day of the assassination. I’ve developed an increased sensitivity to hearing about deaths, especially premature and tragic ones, and my eyes overflowed with tears when I read the description of Jackie Kennedy’s reaction to leaving Dallas after her husband’s death was pronounced. The new President Johnson and the Secret Service advised her to go back to D.C. immediately, but she refused, saying she would not leave Dallas without her husband’s body. Johnson consented and had Jackie and the president’s body in a coffin aboard Air Force One. The entire flight, Jackie sat in the back of the plane with the coffin next to her.

Stories like this always get me, hearing people’s experiences of great tragedy and loss and how they coped in a life without the ones they loved. It would certainly be worse to experience loss with the public eye staring down at you every single day and evaluating your life and every facial expression.