Just before Christmas 1972, I pulled a sheet of paper from my new stationery box and penned a letter to Joe Biden in an awkward cursive: “Dear Senator Biden, I was very sorry to read about the passing of your wife and daughter … ” the note began.
I was 15 years old.
Why would a teenager write a sympathy note to a United States senator? I think it was a combination of the fact that as an aspiring young politico, I already had a sense of Biden as an idealistic, emotional man – and that I was deeply upset by the shocking deaths of his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi in a car accident while on a trip to buy the family’s Christmas tree.
I was also struggling to explain the unexplainable.
I’d yet to experience a death in my own family and the bubble of certitude I had been born into was pretty much intact until I heard about the Biden deaths. In time, I’d learn that lesson more fully, but back then I had only a glimmer that in life, to borrow from Dashiell Hammett, we live only while blind chance spares us. Or, as the vice president himself said at Yale’s commencement only last month: “Reality has a way of intruding” into one’s life.
After I put my sympathy note into the mail, I forgot about it until several months later when a cream-colored envelope arrived for me from “Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware, United States Senate, Washington D.C.”
“Dear Mr. Petrow,” read the letter inside:
“I offer a belated thank-you for your kind words of condolence. I deeply appreciate your sentiments. I owed so very much to Neilia. She had a talent for making not only her own life worthwhile but also the lives of those around her. She was both a loving mother and a loving wife. In addition, she was my political confidant, in whose judgment I had implicit and utmost trust. Neilia looked forward to our coming to Washington. Now our life has been completely torn apart by an event I shall never completely understand. Neilia deserved better. Thanks so much for your note. It was deeply appreciated. Best wishes, Joe Biden”
Written on a manual typewriter, Biden’s letter has withstood four decades in my home filing system. It’s also become an artifact of my teenage years, a hard-copy touchstone to an era long gone.
The envelope also contained two Mass cards, one each for Neilia and Naomi. On the back of Neilia Biden’s card came a quote from Romeo and Juliet: “Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field.” His infant daughter’s card read: “Dear God, What greater thing can be said of Amy than Ezekiel’s words: ‘As is the mother, so is her daughter.’”
Above all, I was struck by Biden’s reflection that there might never be an explanation of this tragedy that he – or anyone – would completely understand. The certainty of his uncertainty astounded me, having come of age in a black and white world, both on TV and in real life.
I was 15 years old.
Why would a teenager write a sympathy note to a United States senator? I think it was a combination of the fact that as an aspiring young politico, I already had a sense of Biden as an idealistic, emotional man – and that I was deeply upset by the shocking deaths of his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi in a car accident while on a trip to buy the family’s Christmas tree.
I was also struggling to explain the unexplainable.
I’d yet to experience a death in my own family and the bubble of certitude I had been born into was pretty much intact until I heard about the Biden deaths. In time, I’d learn that lesson more fully, but back then I had only a glimmer that in life, to borrow from Dashiell Hammett, we live only while blind chance spares us. Or, as the vice president himself said at Yale’s commencement only last month: “Reality has a way of intruding” into one’s life.
After I put my sympathy note into the mail, I forgot about it until several months later when a cream-colored envelope arrived for me from “Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware, United States Senate, Washington D.C.”
“Dear Mr. Petrow,” read the letter inside:
“I offer a belated thank-you for your kind words of condolence. I deeply appreciate your sentiments. I owed so very much to Neilia. She had a talent for making not only her own life worthwhile but also the lives of those around her. She was both a loving mother and a loving wife. In addition, she was my political confidant, in whose judgment I had implicit and utmost trust. Neilia looked forward to our coming to Washington. Now our life has been completely torn apart by an event I shall never completely understand. Neilia deserved better. Thanks so much for your note. It was deeply appreciated. Best wishes, Joe Biden”
Written on a manual typewriter, Biden’s letter has withstood four decades in my home filing system. It’s also become an artifact of my teenage years, a hard-copy touchstone to an era long gone.
The envelope also contained two Mass cards, one each for Neilia and Naomi. On the back of Neilia Biden’s card came a quote from Romeo and Juliet: “Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field.” His infant daughter’s card read: “Dear God, What greater thing can be said of Amy than Ezekiel’s words: ‘As is the mother, so is her daughter.’”
Above all, I was struck by Biden’s reflection that there might never be an explanation of this tragedy that he – or anyone – would completely understand. The certainty of his uncertainty astounded me, having come of age in a black and white world, both on TV and in real life.
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