STRENGTH IN SORROW
Kennedys grieve loss of Saoirse, at just 22
As the Kennedy family endures yet another tragedy, Ethel Kennedy has emerged again as a pillar of strength, and an example for all of us of uplifting grace and dignity amid unfathomable pain.
Most of us are left to deal with grief without the harsh glare of the public spotlight — but not the Kennedys. Some might say that’s the price of fame, wealth and power. It shouldn’t be. It has to be a painful and daunting challenge.
Thank God for the calm in the middle of the storm that has always been Ethel Kennedy. Her simple and dignified comment that “the world is a little less beautiful” because of the loss of her granddaughter Saoirse was classic Ethel Kennedy for its simplicity, and calming effect in the midst of the trauma of a young life taken too soon.
It is what we have come to expect of Ethel, whose strength, resilience and quiet spirit always seems to shine through like a beacon of light in the darkness, despite the tragedies she has personally endured — the loss of her husband and brother-in-law to assassins’ bullets, and deaths of her sons Michael and David.
And still she rises, as the poet Maya Angelou would say. Ethel’s dignity, through what can only be called a gauntlet of grief, has always come through and over the years, she has given countless women the strength to cope with unbearable crises and devastating loss. It is a dignity marked with pragmatism.
“When we lost Bobby, I would wake up in the morning and think, ‘He’s OK. He’s in Heaven, and he’s with Jack and a lot of my brothers and sisters and my parents.’ So it made it very easy to get through the day thinking he was OK,” she once said.
Following her husband’s assassination, she turned her grief into good works, establishing the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, seeking to keep alive his vision in this world. Her own sons and daughters followed her example, using their privileged position for good in a wide range of causes. Even her granddaughter Saoirse, tragically lost so young, had begun to make a name for herself, speaking out about depression and about gun violence.
I am especially thankful
for Ethel’s simple and calming strength today as my sympathies go out to all the members of the Kennedy family for the loss of beautiful Saoirse. Ethel Kennedy has long been an inspiration to her own family and to those of us watching from afar, and at 91, she remains an example of strength in the face of adversity.