On Death of Kings and Princes

 When we were growing up in the 1960's, one of the richest men in the world was Mr. Aristotle Onassis. He was a shipping magnate of Greek origin and had accumulated a fabulous amount of wealth. He came from a poor family, but by his wits, hard-work and luck he did manage to go up in the world. He had married but after a few years divorced and married again, but that didn't work out either. He had achieved immense amount of wealth, but did not find much happiness.

But he had another dream: he wanted to get into a royal family. He wanted to marry a princess and become royalty. Even with all his wealth he felt like he had not achieved everything that he wanted to achieve. He had a son and a daughter from his marriages, and he loved them both, but next time around he wanted to marry into royalty. He looked and mixed with the Royal families of England, Belgium, Luxembourg and a couple of others in the 1930's and 1940's, but nothing came his way.

He was more than 60 years old, when suddenly President Kennedy was assassinated. The Kennedy family somehow was "royal" family in America. Mrs. Jackie Kennedy was beautiful, dashing, fashionable and out-going. She caught everybody's eyes. Aristotle had his eyes on her. He came over to America and through connections started dating Jackie. She was 39 and Aristotle was 69....but that did not stop him. Jackie looked at his money, and he looked at her fame. Finally they married. That's when we heard about Aristotle Onassis. He had finally landed into the royalty.

A few years after their marriage, Aristotle's only son was flying a plane above the Alps, when he crashed. He suffered serious brain injury, but did not die right away. Onassis’s life and dream shattered. He sat by his son’s side, summoned all the best Neuro-Surgeons of Europe and America. They were flown in by chartered flights. But they could not do anything.  Aristotle bursts into a rage, cursed the doctors, yelled and screamed, even punched one. But nothing could be done. The son slowly slipped towards death. No best surgeons in the world could help. The son died in his father's arms.

Next episode: Hafez al-Assad was Syria's dictator. He was grooming his eldest son to take over after him (he was the elder brother of the present President of Bashar al-Assad). This kid was into racing cars. One day in the 1970's, he was racing his car towards the Airport in Damascus. He crashed. He was taken to the ICU. The father came rushing.....the son was dying. The father raged and yelled...cursed the doctors...but the son slipped into death in front of him. Hafez ordered everybody out of the room; closed the door, and sat with the dead body for several hours. People could hear him screaming and crying from outside. Finally he came out and left the hospital. Hafez had killed so many thousands of his opponents; now he had to experience the death of his oldest son.

I guess we all have to bear our own burdens.

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