The Measure of Mourning – Edward Moore Kennedy August 29, 2009
Posted by voolavex in Politics, Politics & Religion, Social Issues.trackback
My father – from whom my thinking flows to a large and fine degree – was a Boston Irish Catholic – a term I first learned from my BIC late brother-in-law – who was one as well. I am not sure if this brother in law was a Democrat but my father was – An FDR, HST, JFK Boston Irish Catholic Democrat and proud of it. And my father was flawed in the way that the Irish seem to have canonized the act of being flawed. I think he knew that the same flaw in JFK and his brothers existed. I think he understood and accepted it with grace and sadness – in probably the same way people who loved these brothers had to do in order to support them in their endeavors.
For every person who will quickly point out the wrongs and even terrible wrongs these men did in their lives – there are those who will also point out how hard the last brother tried to balance them in his life – his own and those of his family. How he worked tirelessly to place a light in the shadows each one, sadly, created and the paths they took in error. He could not undo those flaws. But he lived his adult life to try and diminish them – not by ignoring or belittling their existence but by acts of redemption that resulted in 300 laws he wrote and another 700 in which he was instrumental and by 47 years of service to his country and his own home state where I was born and raised for the early part of my life. I cannot let these acts be darkened in his hour of death and I won’t.
Edward Moore Kennedy was father and a brother and a son. He was a husband. He was a legislator, a peacemaker and a fellow American – he was a champion of our citizens no matter what they believed and he did not write exclusionary laws. His laws crossed the aisle. He was so much like every one of us – he screwed up worse than some and not nearly as badly as others. He lived past these dark moments and moved on. He tried to do better when he knew better and he died -not as a cautionary example but as a man who simply donated his life to public service. He raised his own children and his brother’s lost children – he stood for something. He reminded me of my own father whom I loved in full. Remember him as you do those you have lost – with all their strengths and weakness Mourn Ted Kennedy’s passing the same way and endeavor to be grateful for the gifts you have been left and the lessons you have learned from the lives each one lived.
Voolavex 
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