Stuff I Wish I'd Written.

Frank DiGiacomo, on the death of John F. Kennedy Jr.:

When Mike Nichols spoke from the Book of Revelations at Jacqueline Onassis' funeral in May 1994, his voice a shipwreck, he said: "There will be no more death." But here we are again, and this time it's us, our generation, and so the loss, the sense of vulnerability is ours to bear. We're all older now. And somehow, New York's 21st century seems a little colder and more distant knowing that John Kennedy-who was supposed to be in our future, who may be irreplaceable in our lives-is contained forever, back here with our youth, in his father's century, the 20th. If only he had been able to look out the window of his Piper Saratoga and seen the striated lights of the World Trade Center towers, the glow of the Chrysler Building's Art-Deco hubcaps, the white streams of the avenues, the Empire State's block of blue-lit limestone and the streaked spiderwebs of the Manhattan, Brooklyn and Triborough bridges. Then west to the river and home.