Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose

by Joe Biden

We should not let this disease take over our entire existence. He told Beau to go home and live like he had a future: “Run for governor. Have a purpose.”

Almost every day after that, I found myself acting on that advice—have a purpose. No matter what came at me, I held fast to my own sense of purpose. I held on for dear life. If I lost hold of that and let Beau’s battle consume me, I feared, my whole world would collapse.

And if the problem is fear, the answer is knowledge. Each side has to be willing to try to understand the concerns of the other.

I sometimes felt like a lonely voice in those years, constantly warning people that making communities safe is like cutting grass. You cut your grass on a beautiful summer weekend and it looks great. You let it go for a week, it gets a little ragged. You let it go for a month, it looks bad. You let it go for the summer, you’ve got a disaster on your hands.

I have come to believe that the first duty of a public servant is to help bring people together, especially in crisis, especially across difficult divides, to show respect for everybody at the table, and to help find a safe way forward. After forty-five years in office, that basic conviction still gave me purpose.

He told me to get a calendar, and every night, before I went to bed, put down a number on that day’s date. One is as bad as the day you heard the news, he said, and ten is the best day of your life. He told me not to expect any tens, and he said don’t spend any time looking at that calendar, but mark it every day. After about six months, put it on graph paper and chart it. What he promised me turned out to be true: the down days were still just as bad, but they got farther and farther apart over time.

“Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes,” I told him, smiling. “I don’t think you have a soul.” He looked at me for a second and smiled back. “We understand each other,” he said.

I was determined not to break down in front of Jill, since I knew it would really scare her. So I walked into the bedroom, grabbed my rosary, and started praying. I didn’t know what to ask for, but the simple act of prayer calmed me.

I had always tried to impart to my children the lesson that my mother taught me, my sister, and my brothers: There is no one in the world you are closer to than your brother and sister. You have to be able to count on each other.

“Joe,” he said, “you’ve got to go down tonight.” I knew he was right. That’s what I had planned on doing, but it meant something to me to hear it from Barack. I was in the air, heading to Houston, a few hours later.

That’s my brother’s story; there are thousands of people telling those stories right now. Telling the same story, about when Beau Biden held their hand. My only claim on my brother is that he held my hand first.… “And as it began, so did it end. His family surrounded him, everyone holding on to him, each of us desperately holding him. Each of us saying, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ And I held his hand, and he took his last breath, and I know that I was loved. And I know that his hand will never leave mine.”

It is a blessing to be able to share the feeling of enveloping grief, to have people you love nearby to absorb some of the worst pain.

There are times when each of us must bear the burden of loss alone, and in his or her own way. The people who really understand that are the people carrying those burdens, too. And they are another real source of solace.

I also thought of my dad that morning in Kiawah, and one of the greatest life lessons he taught me, when I was a teenager. We were at a traffic light in downtown Wilmington, and my dad and I caught a glimpse of two men on a nearby corner. They embraced, kissed each other, and then headed off separately to face their days—as I supposed thousands of husbands and wives all over the city did every morning. I just turned and looked at my dad for an explanation. “Joey, it’s simple,” my dad told me. “They love each other.”

grief is a process that respects no schedule and no timetable.