Edward Moore Kennedy 1932-2009

I’m on vacation on Cape Cod this week, the first relaxed visit I’ve had here in 35 years. My cell phone died Monday and I scoured the web looking for a store where I could replace it. The only one on the cape is in Hyannis, so I got in the car this morning and set out.

The radio came on with the engine, it sounded like someone giving a campaign speech. I paid more attention to backing around some pine trees than to what was broadcast and I was driving down the road before I realized Ted Kennedy was being eulogized.

I turned the car around and headed back to the cottage. No point going to Hyannis today.

Later, I sat under the pines with a book, breathing the salt air, watching the sunlight play on the surface of a freshwater pond, but Sen. Kennedy kept coming into my mind. I am, after all, in his neighborhood.

He’d been in the upper house of Congress since I was two and a half years old and however one remembers the man, he was a fixed star in the political firmament, his position as unvarying as Sirius. He was the least gifted and most burdened political Kennedy of his generation, but for all his faults, he was dedicated to public service in a way I doubt we shall ever see again.

I hope he finds the repose that always seemed to elude him in life.

One Comment

  1. Posted 8/27/2009 at 10:51 am | Permalink

    Teddy will be sorely missed by so many “populations” and individuals. The Kennedy family has been at the forefront of social justice and full of naughty boys, to boot! I have always been amazed at how any of us can make gigantic huge terrible mistakes that impact others in awful ways, and YET…we are all still capable of beautiful, miraculous, loving, fair, generous, courageous and brilliant actions. Some of us can even be capable of repeated actions such as the latter! Ted Kennedy was one of those. Thank God. Who will we look to now?

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