The lion of the Senate, the youngest son turned patriarch, is on his way to join his brothers in Arlington National Cemetery. Before he left his beloved Massachusetts, he orchestrated his final goodbye in Boston. The mourners assembled to remember his life included the powerful and famous, including senators, governors, and presidents.
The president of the United States delivered a lovely eulogy, but I'm not here to write about that, or about anything any elected official said. The people who best knew Edward Moore Kennedy were the people Edward Moore Kennedy raised. (One, his youngest son Patrick, is an elected official who spoke movingly about how his father tended to his bedside as the young Patrick suffered from asthma attacks.) The values he imparted to his family in the days, weeks, years, and decades before this rainy grey day are his values.
These values are found in the words of Edward Moore Kennedy, Jr.
The son who shares a name with Senator Kennedy (and who gave that name in turn to his own son) never ran for office. He is not a senator, and as far as I know, has no ambition for political office. But in him so clearly are the values that led the Kennedys to fight for better wages, safer workplaces, and yes, better health care for all. Today, as he eulogized his father, Edward M. Kennedy Jr., said:
He was not perfect, far from it. But my father believed in redemption. And he never surrendered, never stopped trying to right wrongs, be they the results of his own failings or of ours.
But today I’m simply compelled to remember Ted Kennedy as my father and my best friend. When I was 12 years old, I was diagnosed with bone cancer. And a few months after I lost my leg, there was a heavy snowfall over my childhood home outside of Washington D.C. And my father went to the garage to get the old Flexible Flyer, and asked me if I wanted to go sledding down the steep driveway.
And I was trying to get used to my new artificial leg. And the hill was covered with ice and snow. And it wasn’t easy for me to walk. And the hill was very slick. And as I struggled to walk, I slipped and I fell on the ice. And I started to cry and I said, I can’t do this. I said, I’ll never be able to climb up that hill.
And he lifted me up in his strong, gentle arms and said something I will never forget, he said, I know you can do it. There is nothing that you can’t do. We’re going to climb that hill together, even if it takes us all day.
Sure enough, he held me around my waist and we slowly made it to the top. And you know, at age 12 losing your leg pretty much seems like the end of the world. But as I climbed on to his back and we flew down the hill that day, I knew he was right. I knew I was going to be OK.
You see, my father taught me that even our most profound losses are survivable, and that is — it is what we do with that loss, our ability to transform it into a positive event, that is one of my father’s greatest lessons....
My father taught me to treat everyone I meet, no matter what station in life, with the same dignity and respect. He could be discussing arms control with the president at 3 p.m. and meeting with a union carpenter for — on fair wage legislation or a New Bedford fisherman on fisheries policy at 4:30.
I once told him that he had accidentally left some money — I remember this when I was a little kid — on the sink in our hotel room. And he replied, Teddy, let me tell you something, making beds all day is back breaking work. The woman who has to clean up after us today has a family to feed. And just — that’s just the kind of guy he was....
At the end of his life, my dad returned home. He died at the place he loved more than any other, Cape Cod. The last months of my dad’s life were not sad or terrifying, but full — filled with profound experiences, a series of moments more precious than I could have imagined.
He taught me more about humility, vulnerability, and courage than he had taught me in my whole life.
Although he lived a full and complete life by any measure, the fact is, he wasn’t done. He still had work to do. He was so proud of where we had recently come as a nation. And although I do grieve for what might have been, for what he might have helped us accomplish, I pray today that we can set aside this sadness and instead celebrate all that he was and did and stood for. I will try to live up to the high standard that my father set for all of us when he said, the work goes on; the cause endures; the hope still lives; and the dream shall never die.
Those are just excerpts. Click the link for the whole eulogy. Or watch it for yourself. Teddy Jr. may not be a senator or representative or president, but he is a leader, like his dad. Teddy Kennedy may have made his share of mistakes, but he sure did well imparting the best of what we are to his children. That was clear today.
If anyone, anyone ever tells you that liberals don't have family values, show them Teddy Jr.'s words. Then ask them what values they stand for.