Ashley recalled our annual Thanksgiving trips to Nantucket, when “my brothers would come get me out of class and we would pile up in the Jeep Wagoneer and travel seven hours—my favorite car ride.”
The past year had weighed heavily on her, just as it had on all of us, yet she, too, saw a blessing in being beside our brother during that final phase of his life. She talked about what she termed the “tragic privilege” of accompanying Beau to his chemo appointments every other Friday. Afterward, they often stopped for breakfast, during which Beau made her listen to what she came to think of as his theme song: “You Get What You Give,” by the New Radicals. She repeated the lyrics for those sitting rapt in the full church.
This whole damn world could fall apart
You’ll be okay, follow your heart.
You’re in harm’s way, I’m right behind.
“In retrospect,” Ashley said, “I think Beau played that song during our mornings together—not for him, but for me. To remember to not give up or let sadness consume me, consume us.”
She then summed up:
“As long as I have Hunt, I have you. So Beauie… see you. Love you so much.”
Ashley and I kissed and hugged. I couldn’t have been prouder. I knew Beau couldn’t have been prouder, either.
She’d set everyone at ease, including me. As I stepped behind the podium and opened my notes, I felt calm—uncharacteristically calm. I dread speaking in front of big crowds. I’d been aware of how much everyone worried about me, and not just at this moment. I’d sensed a general concern about the effect Beau’s passing would have on my sobriety. Under other circumstances, that concern would have only heightened my anxiety.
Not now.
With a thousand faces staring up at me, and the service being watched by millions more on TV, I felt cocooned within my family: Ashley, Mom and Dad, my aunts and uncles and cousins, my wife and daughters—they all were there with me, and they all were there for me.
And then there was Beau. Since the day that he died, it still didn’t feel as if Beau was gone.
After thanking the speakers who came before me, and reaffirming Beau’s love for Ashley—“He loved the way you laugh. He loved your smile”—I spoke directly to Beau’s children. They huddled together in the front pew. I repeated what I’d told them all week: that their father would always be with them and a part of them, and that their extended family would love and protect them the way that same family loved and protected me and their father.
“Natalie,” I went on, “he is that piece of you that allows you to be so caring and compassionate. He’s the reason why you are so protective of your brother, the same way he was with me.
“Hunter, Robert Hunter Biden the Second—he tied you and me together forever. You are his calm and his focus. You are so much like your daddy, you know, watching the two of you fish at the end of the dock was like seeing two images of the same person.
“Just like Aunt Valerie was there for your daddy and me—just like we had Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Frankie, Uncle Jack, Uncle John, Mom-Mom and Da-Da—you have your aunt Ashley, your aunt Liz, your aunt Kathleen, your Poppy and Mimi, your Nana and Pop. We will surround you with the same love, a love so big and so beautiful. The same love that made your daddy and me will now make you.”
I had no inkling then, of course, of just how complicated all that soon would become.
I retold the story about Beau holding my hand when we were scared kids in the hospital room, and how mine was hardly the only hand he held over the years in someone’s time of great need. Survivors of abuse, parents of fallen soldiers, victims of violent crime—he held them all.
“There are thousands of people telling those stories right now,” I said. “Telling the same story—about when Beau Biden held their hand.
“He was clarity,” I continued, speaking as much to myself as to those inside the church. “A clarity you can step into. He was the clarity of Lake Skaneateles at sunrise. A clarity you could float in. A clarity that was contagious. He was that clarity not just for his family but for everyone who called him friend.
“My only claim on my brother,” I then told everyone ever touched by Beau, “is that he held my hand first.”
As I read those words, time didn’t exist for me anymore. I had no idea how long I’d been up there (it was twenty-two minutes at that point). I didn’t worry about what anyone thought or about anyone’s concerns.
“Forty-two years ago,” I finally concluded, “I believe that God gave us a gift. He gave us the gift of sparing my brother, sparing him long enough to give the love of a thousand lifetimes. God gave us a boy who had no limits to the weight of love he could bear.
“And as it began, so it did end: His family surrounding him. Everyone holding on to him. Each of us desperately holding him. Each of us whispering, ‘I love you. I love you. I love you.’ And I held his hand as he took his last breath. I know that I was loved, and I know that his hand will never leave mine.”
When I finished and returned to my pew, Dad stood to kiss me.
He then whispered in my ear:
“Beautiful.”
I felt hope after that long week. I even sensed that others had begun to feel
