I went to John F. Kennedy’s funeral procession. My father was a lawyer and had an office overlooking the route. We arrived early in the morning and my mother spread a blanket on the carpet for us to sit on. My sister and I ate fried egg sandwiches wrapped in white paper from the deli on the corner where the man knew my father’s name. Hey Art, he said, is this your family?

I had never eaten a breakfast sandwich, never had an indoor picnic, and had only been to my father’s office maybe twice before. I was excited. I expected a brass band and majorettes. Did I have a day off from school? I think so.

As we looked out the window, people started lining the street. Lots of people, all ages, all ethnicities. I remember a black girl around my age, dressed like she was going to church, hopping up and down to keep warm. It was winter in Washington, DC Everyone was bundled up and I see it in my memory as a black and white photo: dark overcoats, hats and scarves and gloves, all in shades of gray and black. Appropriately.

There were no majorettes, of course. This wasn’t going to be a parade with flag waving and cotton candy. Instead, my mother called it a procession, a funeral procession. There were bands; I don’t know what music they played. I remember the car with the coffin covered with an American flag. I remember the saddled, riderless horse with the big black boots stuck backwards in the stirrups. I remember my mother crying and my father with his arm around her.

As we left to go home, the elevator operator, a black man not much taller than me, was crying too. And when we got home, our neighbor, Mr. Turner, a die-hard Republican conservative, sat outside on his stoop and shook his head. I knew from listening to my parents that he had not voted for Kennedy, but that day all of America was in mourning.

I grew up proud to be an American. Of course there were problems. My parents complained about a lot. Just three months before Kennedy’s funeral, we went to the March on Washington and listened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of equality. Angry discussions around the dinner table about civil rights, women’s rights, jobs and health care took place every night.

But I didn’t want to be there

any other country.

My father fought in World War II. We stood up against authoritarianism, and I thought we made America a place for every kind of person, religion, and origin. As a young woman I knew for sure that this country

a

would always be that shining city on a hill, a biblical reference used by Kennedy, Reagan and Obama, a beacon to the rest of the world.

Sixty years later, the beautiful city is tarnished. The light is diminished, strained by hatred, division and fear. We experience little in common except the death of cooperation, compromise, and any hope of shared values. When former First Lady Rosalynn Carter ended up in hospice, the Republican presidential candidate mocked her president husband

Jimmy

Carter. Rosalynn will be buried Wednesday, after a memorial service, a funeral and hours of “laying in repose” at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Her casket will follow a published route from Atlanta to Plains, Georgia. I can’t help but think about who will line the streets and roads. I worry; it seems like a prime opportunity for a mass shooting.

Our democracy is failing. I see it happening. Now I mourn with my children, not for one man or one woman, but for our entire country.

Diana Wagman, author of Opinion, is the author of six novels.