Although I never met a Kennedy and only saw old Rose being pushed by a nurse while walking the beach at Hyannis, I can't stop thinking of this young woman. She seemed like a person who would have quietly done so much in her life with her passion for the environment and the state of our oceans, but what is gut-wrenching is her brief hour or so of joy when her sweet daughter was born before she was whisked away for the alarming news. She wrote that she thought she was the healthiest person she knew, swimming a mile the day before giving birth. She said all she wanted all her life was be good for her mother, who has been through so much. She had a wonderful husband and said she was so sad she couldn't spend a life with him and her little children. Why? And the evil runs rampant among us, and nothing seems to happen to those.
She wrote a heartbreaking piece in a November issue of the New Yorker magazine about her diagnosis. My heart broke for her and her family when I read it--and now it breaks again. So young, a newborn baby and another very young child. Oh, what that family has endured.
lily316Original Author