The past several days of stories, eulogies, anecdotes, moving images, and information about the great Senator Kennedy has certainly been an emotional torrent for me and my entire family as I know has been the case for many, many others around the world really.  Underlying the emotions has been a gnawing feeling of inadequacy in terms of being able to do anything for the Kennedy family that might convey the grief and sorrow we feel along with them for the loss of such an unusual and outstanding human being.  I live too far away to have gone to the street to honor him and the family as his motorcade passed so can only hope that the family understands that for every person who stood along the way to physically demonstrate their admiration, respect, and affection for Senator Kennedy and the Kennedy family there were thousands upon thousands, if not millions, more who felt the very same way.

As fitting and proper as all of it was, it somehow felt to me still inadequate but then I don't know that there's any way for the nation to ever fully honor Senator Kennedy for all he did, to even approach repaying the Kennedy family or to express our love and solidarity with them adequately.  How could we ever possibly return to them what they have given to us?  It is my deep hope that the love of so many provides some comfort to them and that they will always be able to find some solace knowing that so many feel as they do about the incredible Senator Ted Kennedy and all the other members of the Kennedy family.

I grew up in what can only be described as a Kennedy household.  I was a mere toddler in 1960 but my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents all proudly voted for John F. Kennedy for President.  Their homes all had Kennedy images in them.  When I was in kindergarten and the President was murdered my parents, but particularly my mother, just two years younger than Teddy, was inconsolable, sobbing in front of the tiny black and white tv for days until the funeral was over.  I stood by her side trying to comfort her to no avail.  I remember it all unfolding on tv with Walter Cronkite.  I wrote Teddy a letter around 1966 and got an autographed 8 x 10 photo of the dashing young Senator I cherish to this day.  The murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy again swept my home with unparalleled grief and sorrow for which there seemed no consolation to my mother especially.  The emotions were so strong, that if I hadn't known better I would have thought these men members of our immediate family.  My father cried too, but as an ex-marine mostly supressed his tears as was the rule of manhood at the time.

Through the years I got to meet Senator Kennedy a couple of times, briefly shake his hand and say hello.  I saw him in person on several other occassions.  I testified before one of his subcommittees while in college in Boston.  I had the honor of voting for him for President in the Massachusetts primary in 1980.  Senator Kennedy was always there, always fighting for what was right, always standing up for the values that had, from the beginning, bonded my family so close to his.  He was as much a fixture of the landscape as the Berkshires of Massachusetts.  Like others I have cried much and felt so much sadness the past few days and it is all bound up in this decades old relationship between the Senator's family and my own.  I feel a profound sadness that goes with this odd kinship I feel with them.  Like no others in our country the Kennedys, it seems to me, make us realize we are all in it together and have an obligation to care about and for each other.

Of all the incredibly moving and heartwarming stories and anecdotes that I heard this weekened, two had more force and touched me more deeply than anything else.  The first was, of course, the eulogy of Ted, Jr. and the story about his father taking him out sledding. No human being could fail to be touched by the deep and abiding love that abounded both in the tale and in the telling of it.  And the other was a brief anecdote mentioned by Keith Olbermann in the minutes before the hearse arrived at the church where the funeral was to be held.  This is a paraphrase of what he said but close enough, I thnk, to accurately convey the point.  I had never heard the story before.

Olbermann said that one day someone asked Senator Kennedy why it was he always took up the side of the poor and fought for them and why did he care?  The Senator, looking almost angry and offended, took a minute before he spoke and said simply in reply "Have you never read the Bible?"  For me, that response explained not only his championing of the poor, the dispossesed and the downtrodden, it explained everything about what motivated him in his public life and what is at the center of the great family he was a part of.  Godspeed Senator, and Godspeed to all your family too.