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| Friend, |
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| Thank you
for the outpouring of support in response to my mother's passing. I
wanted to share with you the tribute I wrote and posted on social
media yesterday. |
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| Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. |
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| My mom, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, passed peacefully into Heaven this
morning. She was 96. She died in Boston surrounded by many of her nine
surviving children and her friends. God gave her 34 grandchildren, 24
great-grandchildren, and the energy to give them all the attention
they required. He blessed her with a rich and eventful life. Even as
she declined in recent months, she never lost her sense of fun, her
humor, her spark, her spunk, and her joie de vivre. She wrung joy from
every moment, but for 56 years she has spoken with yearning of the day
she would reunite with her beloved husband. She is with him now, with
my brothers David and Michael, with her parents, her six siblings, all
of whom predeceased her, and her “adopted” Kennedy siblings Jack,
Kick, Joe, Teddy, Eunice, Jean, Rosemary, and Patricia. From the day
she met my father, her new family observed that she was “more Kennedy
than the Kennedys.” She was never more enthusiastic about the
afterlife than when she considered that she would also be reunited
with her many dogs, including 16 Irish setters — all conveniently
named “Rusty.” |
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| The cognitive dissonance that allowed her to keep two inconsistent
truths in her heart at the same time without budging made my mother a
collection of irreconcilable convictions. Among these was her ironic
combination of deep — nearly blind — reverence for the Catholic Church
and irreverence toward its clerics. She was at once starstruck by
America’s presidents, all of whom she came to know personally, and at
the same time skeptical of government and toward all figures of
authority. She balanced her contempt for pretension and hypocrisy with
a boundless tolerance for error and mistakes in others. |
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| God also endowed her with a perpetual attitude of gratitude that
fueled her taste for adventure and an irrepressible buoyancy in a life
beset by a continuous parade of heartbreaking tragedies. Her sunny
optimism eventually brought my shattered father back to life following
the assassination of his brother and then helped her children to
thrive after her husband’s assassination five years later. |
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| Among her most defining qualities were moral and physical
fearlessness. She was a peerless equestrian and held the high jump
record on horseback, jumping 7′9″ on a Quarter Horse. Critics named
her among the best female amateur tennis players, and she was a
competitive diver. But she did every sport well — from football to
skiing, waterskiing and kayaking. Her disciplined stoicism and her
deep faith in God enabled her to endure over ten years of pregnancy
without complaint. She also suffered the murders of her husband and
Uncle Jack, and the early deaths of two of her children. Various air
crashes killed both of her parents, her brother, her sister-in-law,
and her nephew John. She never enjoyed flying, but her worry never
stopped her from boarding a plane. While giving short shrift to her
own monumental suffering, she always showed intense compassion for
others. |
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| My mother invented tough love, and she could be hard on her
children when we didn’t live up to her expectations. But she was also
intensely loyal, and we always knew that she would stand fiercely
behind us when we came under attack by others. She was our role model
for self-discipline, for resilience, and for self-confidence. She
deeded to each of her 11 children her love of good stories, her
athleticism, her competitive spirit, and the deep curiosity about the
world, and the intense interest in people of all backgrounds, which
caused her to pepper everyone she met — from cab drivers to presidents
— with a relentless cascade of questions about their lives. She also
gave us all her love of language and for good storytelling. I credit
her for all my virtues. I’m grateful for her generosity in overlooking
my faults. |
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