Back here in Austin, you folks already knew. Your world had already been shattered into a thousand pieces; your grief causing you to throw up your hands in despair and cry out, “Why him?”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe my family knew nothing of your anguish. Literally in the dark, our world was still intact as we slept peacefully in our Tokyo beds. We didn’t yet know of our loss or of how America would never be quite the same again. Indeed, such was our dreamy contentment that it held only the promise of yet another untroubled day in a long line of untroubled days.

But, in those early Sunday morning hours all that was splintered to shreds by a heavy, insistent pounding on our front door accompanied by an American friend screaming, “The President’s been shot! The President’s been shot! The President is dead!”

Would the man never stop screaming? And what for the love of God was he saying?

Bombarded by his toxic shrieks, our sleepy half-wakefulness struggled to activate. If he’d only please please stop with the yelling and let our brains catch up to his dreadful proclamation! Unfortunately there was little chance of this happening as he was a man who liked nothing better than being the spreader of startling news. And, to be sure, with this announcement he had broken all his past records.

As the dawn broke that day upon the Land of the Rising Sun, we were left with only questions. Questions which had no answers. And in that void, it only created more, leaving us hollow and bereft and feeling farther away from home than we had ever been.

After a sleepless night, the next morning I decided, as I did every weekday morning, to take our son Jeff to his Japanese nursery school. He was the one foreign child there and had celebrated his fourth birthday only 11 days before. I could see no purpose in keeping him home as I reasoned the best path to take now was the known one. Routine was good. I would keep everything at home on as even a keel as possible.

So that morning Jeff and I walked the four unpaved blocks to his school. (Those of you who have read “Potato in a Rice Bowl” will have a visual memory of this for it is the photo of Jeff in this school that appears on the cover.)

Like me, Jeff was somber, but otherwise happy to see his Japanese classmates. They instantly gathered around him, happy to be with this odd boy who was, in fact, the potato in their rice bowl!

We did not have the convenience of telephones and I was therefore shocked only an hour later to hear a repeat of what had occurred only the day before — another insistent pounding on my door. This time it was a teacher who after running all the way to our house, was breathlessly pleading, “Please! Come now! Jeff-chan no stop crying!”

Alarmed, I swept up my younger child and rushed off in the direction of the school, our scurrying feet causing the dust to rise up around us in clouds. As I entered the classroom, I found Jeff collapsed on a table with his head on his crossed arms, his little body convulsing pitifully. When I touched him, he looked up at me with tear stained cheeks.

Beyond exhaustion, he grabbed hold of me. As I held him close he sobbed, “Why, Mommy, did someone kill my President?” I had, of course, no reply. My brain was screaming the very same horribly unanswerable question.

(So last week, fifty-three years later, I called Jeff. What, I asked him, was he feeling at that moment so long ago? He said it was as if the whole world had died that day.)

One has to wonder at such a depth of feeling in a child so young. Furthermore, his profound reaction is especially puzzling as Jeff had so sparse a memory of America having spent so little of his short life there. Certainly nothing in this suburb of Tokyo represented his country, particularly his classmates who were still trying to figure out who and what he was … and more importantly how that platinum hair sprouted out of his head! None of those children was concerned over the leader of Jeff’s country — or even where Jeff’s country was.

Moreover, I wondered, what did the word, “President,” mean to a small boy? Apparently a great deal.

It was a lonely, unprecedented time to be an American in a foreign country, especially so in Japan where less than two decades earlier we had been their arch enemy, and then their conquerer. But I must say that the Japanese felt a sincere sorrow over Kennedy’s death and showed a remarkable consideration and benevolence which not only surprised me, but also comforted me. I believe this stemmed from the kind of victors we turned out to be. America treated the Japanese with compassion rather than cruelty, much to their surprise and gratitude. Above all, our humane actions were an unanticipated result of their defeat. And would they have, the Japanese admitted, been equally as kind to us had the tables been turned?

All of us remember the day Kennedy died; where we were and what we were doing. Do we, as well, remember when Doctor King and then Bobby were also so cruelly taken from us? Our lives would never be the same. The U.S. would never be the same. Guns had suddenly gone from sport which killed food for our stomachs to weapons that killed that which fed our souls. What had happened to us? All at once a shell-shocked, unguarded America woke up to its own vulnerability — one of its own making.

Martin Luther King was a man of only thirty-nine years. He represented a people of whom I had little understanding and yet even I, a white-faced Austinite, recognized the power, dignity and grandeur of his words. Moreover I knew of how much America needed him. With only one solitary crack of a gun, “I have a dream” was diminished for us all.

And then, only two months later, a third gun took Bobby from us. He was just a kid brother, for Pete’s sake. Wasn’t one brother enough?

“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Pete Seeger pleaded. Then later Peter, Paul and Mary sang it into our hearts, cementing those dreaded questions in us forever. Here now in 2016 we’re in the midst of a trying, unsettling and puzzling presidential campaign. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” has been replaced with the inane question of which candidate’s wife is the sexiest.

Just imagine if Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt had debated over such nonsense. Our country … our world! … would have lost out on Eleanor, a woman whose special brand of beauty would never have won any contest, but whose goodness earned her the love of the world.

As gunshots presently ring throughout our country — some precisely aimed, some randomly propelled into the air — let not our thoughts also be catapulted without sound direction. Let us call upon the sensible wisdom within each of us to make the decisions which create good — the very founding ingredient of our country. Let us believe, with all our hearts, that enough flowers have gone. Let us not be lunkheads.

Peggy Keener of Austin is the author of two books: “Potato In A Rice Bowl” and “Wondahful Mammaries.” Peggy Keener invites readers to share their memories with her by emailing maggiemamm16@gmail.com. Memories shared with Keener may be shared or referenced in subsequent editions of “Full Circle.”