Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

On the last weekend in August, Bill and I were attending an evening beach party when a staff member murmured something in his ear. I watched from a distance and saw the shock register on Bill’s face. Then I heard the news too. Princess Diana had been in a terrible car crash in Paris. Like everyone else in the world, we were in a state of disbelief.

We left the party and immediately called our new Ambassador to France, Felix Rohatyn, who replaced Pamela Harriman after her untimely death earlier that year. We stayed up most of the night calling London and Paris to find out what had happened. It was still hard to accept that such a beautiful and vibrant young woman as Diana could die so suddenly.

I had last seen Diana two months earlier. We’d met at the White House, where she talked passionately and intelligently about two of her chief causes: banning land mines and educating people about HIV/AIDS. She seemed much more self-assured since her separation from Charles, and I sensed that she was finally coming into her own. We talked about her upcoming trip to Thailand for AIDS awareness and to Africa for land mine eradication. She told me that she hoped her boys might study in America someday, and I offered to be a resource for her and them. She was clearly looking forward to the future, which made her death all the more tragic.

Early the next morning I received a call from a representative of Diana’s family, asking if I would attend the funeral in London. I was honored. During the service in Westminster Abbey, where I was seated with the Blairs and members of the royal family, my heart went out to Diana’s sons, whom she had cherished. The venerable cathedral where Diana’s motherin-law had been crowned Queen forty-four years earlier was packed, and more than one million people gathered in the streets outside, listening to the service over a public address system. Hundreds of millions of others around the world watched on television. When Diana’s brother, Charles, delivered his eulogy, he took some famous swipes at the royals for their treatment of his sister, and I could hear the applause from the audience outside the church. It sounded like a thunderclap miles away that rolled over the crowd and gained intensity as it rumbled through the streets, through the Abbey’s doors and down the stone center aisle to the front of the cathedral. Everybody in our section seemed to freeze as the applause echoed. Elton John played “A Candle in the Wind,”

with new lyrics that captured the poignancy of the Princess’s fragile, fleeting life.

The day before Diana’s funeral, the world lost another of its most compelling personalities when Mother Teresa died in Calcutta. Aside from the obvious differences, each of these women had a talent for spotlighting the most vulnerable and neglected people and using her celebrity in calculated ways to help others. Poignant photographs of Diana and Mother Teresa together convey the sweetness of their relationship, and both had spoken to me of their affection for one another.

I flew back to Martha’s Vineyard from Diana’s funeral, then turned around a few days later to fly to Calcutta for Mother Teresa’s. The White House had asked a distinguished delegation of Americans who knew or supported Mother Teresa to accompany me.

Among them was Eunice Shriver, who had recently been ill. She overrode her doctor’s objections and came along, sitting up the whole way, which she said was more comfortable than the couch I urged her to use in the front of the plane. She said her rosary and prayed with the Missionaries of Charity who were representing Mother Teresa’s flock in America. I was grateful I could represent my husband and country in honoring a woman who had touched the world with her unshakable faith and down-to-earth pragmatism.

Mother Teresa’s open casket was carried through the crowded streets of Calcutta into an indoor arena packed with people. The service went on for hours because the leaders of each national and religious delegation were called, one at a time, to lay a wreath of white flowers on the funeral bier. I had lots of time to reflect on my brief but enriching relationship with Mother Teresa.

We first met in February 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast in a Washington hotel ballroom. I remember being struck by how tiny she was and I noticed that she was wearing only socks and sandals in the bitter winter cold. She had just delivered a speech against abortion, and she wanted to talk to me. Mother Teresa was unerringly direct. She disagreed with my views on a woman’s right to choose and told me so. Over the years, she sent me dozens of notes and messages with the same gentle entreaty. Mother Teresa never lectured or scolded me; her admonitions were always loving and heartfelt. I had the greatest respect for her opposition to abortion, but I believe that it is dangerous to give any state the power to enforce criminal penalties against women and doctors. 1 consider that a slippery slope to state control of reproduction, and I’d witnessed the consequences of such control in China and Communist Romania. I also disagreed with her opposition―

and that of the Catholic Church―to birth control. However, I support the right of people of faith to speak out against abortion and try to dissuade women, without coercion or criminalization, from choosing abortion instead of adoption.

While we never agreed about abortion and birth control, Mother Teresa and I found much common ground in many other areas including the importance of adoption. We shared the conviction that adoption was a vastly better choice than abortion for unplanned or unwanted babies. At our first meeting, she told me about her homes for orphans in India and enlisted my help in setting up a similar facility in Washington, D.C., where babies could be cared for until adoption.

When I agreed to assist with the project, Mother