Natural death did not come naturally to the Kennedy family. Two siblings
brought down in flight; two others slain. But now two more siblings have
modeled the death that most Americans say they want and fear they’ll miss;
both Edward Kennedy and his sister Eunice died within weeks of each other, at
home, at peace, surrounded by family, after a race well run. For an eternally
public clan that could not rise or fall or sin or stray without every move
recorded, even death was a chance to shape the debate one more time.
Kennedy both fought death and welcomed it, consulted the experts, treated his
brain tumor aggressively, but also made his plans and found some peace.
President Obama hand delivered a letter from him to Pope Benedict XVI and
asked that the Pontiff pray for him. Kennedy finished his memoirs. He soaked
up honors and awards. He gathered the family and led the prayers two weeks
ago
when Eunice died. “It’s been a chance for us to bond and be together and
share
a special time together,” said his son Patrick of the final days. “That’s a
big gift. [It] let us have the chance to tell him how much we love him.”
Kennedy’s wife Vicki, his children and step-children were all with him at the
end. “He was ready to go,” she told Vice President Joe Biden, who called her
Wednesday morning. “But we weren’t ready to let him go.”
Which makes a certain sense. Kennedy lived his adult life in death’s parlor,
with no reason to imagine he would live long enough for his hair to go grey,
much less white. He barely survived his own plane crash in 1964; he
campaigned
in 1980 in a bullet proof vest. He carried the guilt of a young life lost,
after Mary Jo Kopechne died in the accident he walked away from. He was a
close personal acquaintance of grief, and so was present during its visits to
other people. Biden recalled Kennedy’s ministry after his first wife and
daughter died in a car wreck and his sons were critically injured. “He was on
the phone with me literally every day in the hospital,” Biden said. “I’d turn
around and there would be some specialist from Massachusetts, a doc I never
even asked for, literally sitting in the room with me.” Kennedy spent a lot
of
time at Walter Reed hospital, with wounded soldiers. He gave a dying Senate
reporter a watercolor he’d painted for her nursing home wall. He called
every
family of the 78 Massachusetts residents who died on September 11, to say
“I’m
sorry, and I’m here if you need me.” He opened his Boston home to colleagues
who had to come to town for cancer treatment. “An hour after my sister
passed
away, he was on the phone,” said Senator Chris Dodd. “The moment you needed
to
hear from someone who could share feelings that are hard to express, Ted
Kennedy would be [there].”
For most of us, there are no easy conversations about death and dying, the
topic we avoid like the shady stranger in the dark alley. Two out of three
people die in hospitals or nursing homes, often alone, too often afraid. When
researchers interviewed family members of the recently deceased, half of them
said their loved one did not get the support he or she needed at the end. Yet
it was the idea that doctors should be encouraged to talk to patients and
their families about their wishes that set off a firestorm this summer, one
of
the most disturbed and distorted debates in many years. The effort to talk
about how we die was met with a fury of malice and mischief, the invention of
government “death panels,” the invocation of ghouls at your bedside judging
whether you deserve the care you need.
Because Kennedy was the Senate’s leading champion of health care reform, even
his illness became a debating point. Allies called on lawmakers to honor his
legacy, pass real reform; adversaries cited his case as a cautionary tale
about too much change. “In countries that have government-run health care,”
warned Iowa’s Republican Senator Charles Grassley, “I’ve been told that the
brain tumor that Sen. Kennedy has — because he’s 77 years old — would not be
treated the way it’s treated in the United States.” This would be like
saying,
he went on, that “when somebody gets to be 85 their life is worth less than
when you’re 35, and you pull the tubes on them.”
Never mind that no one has actually proposed any such plan for the U.S.
President Obama has talked about whether it made sense for his dying
grandmother to receive a hip replacement. Kennedy himself observed that he
never needed to worry about his coverage — “I have enjoyed the best medical
care money can buy,” he wrote in Newsweek — and
called for the day when all Americans could expect the same. But as a matter
of public policy, as opposed to private choice, was the cost and ordeal of
Kennedy’s treatment worth the extra month of life he won beyond the 14-month
average survival time for patients with his diagnosis And who do we want
making that judgment
That is the hard question: but Kennedy’s death also raised the simpler one,
about how we plan and what we do to improve the odds of a gentle death. He
had
his family, his doctors, his priest available to discuss his wishes. He did
not need to worry that his treatment was being distorted by doctors afraid
of being sued. He fought, but he knew when the fight was over, and those who
were with him saw hope, not fear. “The truth is, he had expressed to his
family that he did want to go,” said Father Patrick Tarrant of Our Lady of
Victory Church, who was at Kennedy’s bedside. “He did want to go to heaven.
There was a certain amount peace —a lot of peace, actually — in the family
get-together last night.” When his sister Eunice died, Kennedy said that “I
know that our parents and brothers and sisters who have gone before are
filled
with joy to have her by their side again. ” Now his family could say the
same
of him.
See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.
