Talking with all those people in those receiving lines provided me and the rest of my family with an incredible uplift at the most awful time. If ever there was a question about the impact of a life well-lived, it was answered, loud and clear, by the legions who poured past Beau’s casket during those two days.
Our family did what our family always does in a crisis, whether it’s political or personal: everybody took a role.
Dad and I dealt with parts of the planning together, from making decisions about who would speak at the service and when to fielding the calls of dignitaries from all over the world. Dad sat on his porch for hours and took one call after another from current and former leaders from every hemisphere and every country. They all had affection for him; not just respect, but true affection. So each conversation became more than just passing along condolences. It included a story about when “you brought Beau and Hunter to Berlin,” or how “I was so impressed with Beau when he came back to speak about corruption in Romania when he was attorney general,” or “I don’t know if you remember when my niece died, but you were there for our family.”
Most of the time I was encamped at Beau’s house in Wilmington, less than a mile from Dad’s. I handled condolences and well-wishers there and greeted friends who stopped by to see Hallie and her kids.
Our time became so swallowed up or interrupted by others that Dad and I never really sat together to have a heart-to-heart, to talk about what we were going through. We both cried a lot—I saw Dad cry, on his porch, after almost every call. There were moments when we simply held each other, as if holding each other up, soundlessly, realizing it was all we could do, that there were no words to take away the pain. Words almost felt risky. I was scared to death of what Beau’s passing was going to do to him, and he was scared to death of what it was going to do to me.
Each of us, in our way, dreaded the impending doom.
In the midst of it all, I worked on Beau’s eulogy. The thought of writing it amplified the emotions I’d been experiencing, and the prospect of delivering it to such a large, divergent audience only made Beau’s loss more acute.
Yet once I began, those concerns receded and then blew clean away. Despite the enormity of this public address, I realized I was preparing it for an audience of one: my brother. Hell, I knew he’d be fine with anything I came up with—again, that was Beau. So I would write passages and read them back to him aloud. He and I would then edit them and hone them together—at least that’s how it felt. I was amazed at how easily it all came.
I went through a number of significant milestones in our lives, beginning with where it always began: waking up to him in the hospital. I wanted everyone else to understand the immensity of our connection, but I also felt a responsibility to recognize just how many others claimed an enormous connection to my brother as well. The personal responses we received that week underscored that.
Writing his eulogy was at once heart-wrenching and cathartic. That’s the effect I hoped it would have on others. That’s the effect I hoped it would have on our dad.
When I finished, I didn’t read it to Dad. I wanted him to hear it for the first time inside St Anthony’s.
The first eulogy was delivered by General Odierno, his chest blooming with medals. He spoke to Beau’s character and selflessness while serving in Iraq, and then about his moral and ethical roots while serving as the state’s attorney general. He brought up Beau’s “natural charisma” and how others, soldiers and civilians alike, “willingly wanted to follow him.”
He then voiced a sentiment expressed by practically everyone who ever met Beau.
“He was committed to his community, to his home state,” the four-star general emphasized, “and to a nation that I believed one day Beau Biden would lead.”
When he finished, General Odierno stepped before Beau’s casket, stood ramrod still for a long moment, then honored it with a slow, deliberate salute.
President Obama followed. Framed by an altar splashed with white roses and hydrangeas and backlit by the soft glow pouring through the sanctuary’s rose window, the president eulogized Beau for nearly twenty-five minutes. He spoke from notes with the same calm solemnity that had carried him through the last seven long years. He made even those relegated to the overflow room feel as if he were speaking directly to them.
So much of his eulogy, however, was directed at my father, even referring to him at one point as a “brother.”
Beau and I admired the president immensely, not only for the way he treated our dad but for the way he treated our family. (He was my president first and foremost, and he was also my daughter Maisy’s basketball coach.) But it was complicated, though none of that was going through my mind right then. The infighting and internal politicking natural to any White House sometimes spilled over to my dad. I took it personally—maybe too personally—whenever I learned that some aide in the administration had tried to undercut him. So I didn’t hang around the White House much; I didn’t want to be in the position of walking into a barbecue on a Sunday with the president and the White House staff after reading about someone throwing my dad under the bus. I knew I couldn’t control my temper and keep my mouth shut.
Kathleen, however, had become close with Michelle Obama, and our daughter Maisy and her daughter Sasha had been good pals since the second grade at Sidwell Friends, where they both went
