Haunting picture of the most cursed Kennedy of them all: Her father JFK was assassinated, her uncle shot dead, her brother and his wife killed in a plane crash and now she's lost a daughter. How does brave Caroline keep going? | Retrui News | Retrui
Haunting picture of the most cursed Kennedy of them all: Her father JFK was assassinated, her uncle shot dead, her brother and his wife killed in a plane crash and now she's lost a daughter. How does brave Caroline keep going?
SOURCE:Daily Mail
In a rare - but unavoidable - public appearance, Caroline Kennedy's jaw was set in a sombre grimace as she descended the steps of the Church of St Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan, New York.
Cradling her one-year-old granddaughter, Josephine, in her arms outside church earlier this week, raw pain and desolation were etched on Caroline Kennedy's face.
In a rare – but unavoidable – public appearance, her jaw was set in a sombre grimace as she descended the steps outside the Church of St Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan, New York.
Not only was she mourning the death of her beloved younger daughter, Tatiana, just 35, who lost her 18-month battle against acute myeloid leukaemia on December 30, but seeing that tiny tousle-headed girl, Tatiana's youngest child, dressed for the funeral in a blue frock and navy cardigan, must have felt like history repeating itself.
For Caroline herself was just five years old when she lost a parent, her father President John F Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Images of the president's young daughter attending his funeral, alongside his widow Jackie and son John, wearing a pale blue smock coat and a melancholy, distant expression, made front page news around the world.
Sixty-three years on, Caroline can still vividly recall details of that dark day: her brother, whose third birthday it was, saluting their father's coffin; the long black veil hiding their mother's face; the grief and bewilderment she must have felt about saying goodbye.
So to watch Josephine, and three-year-old grandson Edwin, facing the same pain that will cast a shadow over their lives must weigh heavy on the Kennedy heiress.
Family tragedy is something Caroline, a respected diplomat, author and lawyer, known in American political circles as 'the last child of Camelot' – a reference to the youthful optimism and idealism of her father's presidency – has endured time and time again throughout her 68 years.
Caroline Kennedy carries her one-year-old granddaughter, Josephine, as she leaves her daughter's funeral earlier this week
Caroline at the age of five leaving her father's state funeral with her mother, Jackie, holding her and her three-year-old brother John's hands
Famously private, it is sadly telling that most of her public appearances have seen her dressed head-to-toe in black, her head bowed in mourning.
There was her Uncle Bobby, assassinated in June 1968 when Caroline was just ten years old.
There was her mother, Jackie, who died at home in New York in May 1994, shortly after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, aged 64. Her funeral was held at the same church where Caroline would come to bid her daughter farewell three decades later.
Then there was her adored younger brother John, who died alongside his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, when the plane he was piloting crashed into the sea en route to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, in July 1999.
The history books dub it the 'Curse of the Kennedys', but those who know Caroline say the cross to bear has been hers, more than any other's. How one woman can endure so much heartbreak and somehow carry on is almost impossible to comprehend.
Asked this very question by a reporter in 2000, shortly after the death of her brother, Caroline answered, somewhat wearily: 'Oh, you just do. You do it for the children. You have no choice, really. You have to soldier on.'
Her words echoed those of her mother, who is said to have told those closest to her: 'One pulls it together because one must.'
Biographer J Randy Taraborrelli, who has written four bestselling books on the Kennedy dynasty, including JFK: Public, Private, Secret, says Caroline has a natural instinct for surviving even the toughest of times.
'Unfortunately, Caroline has lived long enough with loss to understand that grief doesn't just disappear. It's managed with time,' he told the Daily Mail this week.
'But she has always met tragedy by leaning into responsibility, family, and steadiness rather than public expression.
'Caroline knows first-hand what it means for a kid's life to be divided into before and after. That experience has given her so much empathy and has fine-tuned her protective instincts, especially when children are involved.'
Friends say that her mother Jackie's insistence on putting the next generation first will inform and guide her in the difficult months ahead. 'Caroline is going to have to do for Tatiana's children what Jackie had to do for her children: keep the memory alive of their parent that they might not remember,' a family friend said this week.
'She's going to have to try to preserve the memory of her and make sure they know about her and make sure they remember her.'
In a touching social media post Maria Shriver, Caroline's cousin, paid tribute to Tatiana and her mother: 'My heart has always been with Caroline ever since we were little kids. My whole being is with her now. What a rock she has been.
'Those of us left behind will make sure Eddie and Josie know what a beautiful, courageous spirit their mother was and will always be. She takes after her extraordinary mother, Caroline.'
'Extraordinary' barely comes close to describing the world of Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, whose gilded life has been tinged with sorrow even from birth. A year before she was born, her parents had a stillborn daughter, Arabella. When she was six, another sibling, Patrick, died two days after his premature birth in 1963.
Caroline's daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, was just 35 when she lost her 18-month battle against acute myeloid leukaemia on December 30
Caroline and her mother and brother are followed by her Uncle Bobby, who was assassinated in June 1968 when she was just ten years old
Aged three, Caroline moved to the White House with her parents after her father was sworn in as US president. Her brother, John, was born two weeks later.
Life there was peaceful and idyllic – for a time. She was often photographed riding her pony, Macaroni, around the grounds – inspiring Neil Diamond to write his hit song, Sweet Caroline – a fact he revealed when performing it for her 50th birthday in 2007.
But her grandmother and Kennedy matriarch, Rose, insisted she was 'remarkably unspoiled'.
'She was too young to realise all these luxuries,' she said of Caroline's early childhood. 'She probably thinks it's natural for children to go off in their own airplanes. But she is with her cousins, and some of them dance and swim better than she. They do not allow her to take special precedence.'
In a rare interview, Caroline recalled spending time with her father in the mornings, playing in the Oval Office, 'making construction paper necklaces, eating candy and running around his desk'.
Politics was part of her family fabric. Early vocabulary included, 'plane', 'goodbye' and 'New Hampshire' – learned on the campaign trail with her parents in 1960.
But her childhood was shattered by her father's assassination, after which Jackie, fearing for her children's lives, moved them to New York, hoping to hide them from prying eyes and camera lenses.
Her father's death hit Caroline hard. According to J Randy Taraborrelli, in his book The Kennedy Heirs, 'It would take years of therapy for her to even begin to reconcile it.' She was affected, too, by Jackie's grief, telling a nun at her convent school: 'My mommy cries all the time.'
With the loss of her beloved Uncle Bobby, who had stepped in as a father figure after JFK's death, her heartache was compounded. 'Caroline would see a number of psychologists until she was about 12,' Taraborelli explains. 'At that time, Jackie feared therapy was only keeping her daughter tethered to her grief and stopped sending her.'
Growing up a Kennedy was never going to be easy, but especially for Caroline who was for ever in the shadow of her glamorous mother.
Taraborrelli recalls an argument between the pair, when a teenage Caroline stomped out of the room and declared: 'You know, not a single day goes by that I don't measure myself by the Jacqueline Kennedy yardstick.'
She never took to Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping tycoon her mother married in 1968, reportedly telling her cousin David: 'I don't like him'.
At school, classmates recall a timid girl, who loved animals – even in their New York apartment, the family kept dogs, guinea pigs, finches and a snake as pets – and tried her best to be ordinary. As a teenager, however, Caroline became aware of her status as a public figure. Holiday romances would be plastered across magazines, and she began to resent the constant presence of paparazzi around her home and school.
On her first day as a summer intern at the New York Daily News in 1977, where she dreamed of becoming a photojournalist, she sat on a bench alone for two hours because staff were too intimidated by her surname to approach her.
And death – and danger – surrounded her still.
In 1975, she narrowly escaped an IRA car bomb while staying with the Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser and his then wife Antonia at their home in Kensington, London. Sir Hugh's car exploded into flames and a passer-by was killed.
Seeing that tiny tousle-headed girl, Tatiana's youngest child, dressed for the funeral in a blue frock and navy cardigan, must have felt like history repeating itself for Caroline, who was herself dressed in blue for her father's funeral
Her cousin, David, son of Bobby Kennedy, would later die of a drug overdose while Caroline was staying nearby in Florida. And another cousin, Anthony Radziwill, the son of her mother's sister Lee, died aged 40 after a decade-long battle with cancer.
Yet as a young woman, she was determined to look forward, not back. Caroline graduated from prestigious Radcliffe College with a BA in fine arts in 1980, and went on to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
But her keen intellect required something more and in 1988 she graduated from Columbia Law School. The following year, she passed the New York State bar exam. Following in her father's footsteps as a politician was never the plan, however, and in 1992 Caroline shocked Americans by turning down the opportunity to serve as chair of the Democratic National Convention.
Having dated a list of famous men, including Mark Shand, Queen Camilla's brother, and Jonathan Guinness, of the Guinness family, Caroline married Edwin Schlossberg, an exhibit designer and artist whom she'd met while working at the Met, in 1986.
Jackie had to be convinced, reportedly telling her daughter that Edwin wasn't 'interesting' enough for her only daughter.
Their children, Rose, born in 1988, Tatiana, born in 1990, and Jack, born in 1993, brought great joy to Caroline, who had always mothered her little brother and possessed a strong maternal instinct. 'Being a good mother mattered to Caroline,' Taraborrelli says.
She volunteered for school events and always picked up her children at the end of the day, rather than sending a member of staff.
Unlike many Kennedy marriages hers has endured and her children, and grandchildren, remain a source of immense pride, especially Jack (official name John, after his late grandfather) a Harvard law graduate running for Congress as a Democratic candidate in this year's midterm elections.
Caroline coped well with the loss of her mother in 1994, and was supported by her brother John.
His death five years later aged 38, and that of her sister-in-law Carolyn aged 33, was, however, a devastating blow.
Caroline and John's relationship had come under much scrutiny, with critics claiming she was controlling and bossy, and had taken a dislike to Carolyn, a publicist. But those who knew the siblings best said there was simply 'no one in her life Caroline cared about more than her brother' – and when he died, she went into a tailspin of grief.
Somehow, however, Caroline held it together – publicly, at least – and worked through her pain.
Materially, life today is comfortable. She inherited Red Gate Farm, her mother's 375-acre estate on Martha's Vineyard, and has a personal fortune estimated between £206 million and £370 million.
With Edwin by her side, she went on to have countless career successes, and campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008. In 2013, he appointed her the US ambassador to Japan, making her the first woman ever to hold the post. She resigned in 2017, shortly before President Trump was sworn in.
Five years later, she was appointed to another ambassadorial role – this time in Australia.
Caroline announced her resignation in 2024, the year Tatiana, an environmental journalist and author, was diagnosed with leukaemia. The family kept this devastating health battle a secret until, in November last year, Tatiana wrote a heart-wrenching essay for The New Yorker magazine.
She revealed her leukaemia had a rare mutation, called Inversion 3, and that she had had two stem cell transplants – one from her sister, Rose; the other from a stranger.
But neither managed to halt the disease that was rapidly killing her, causing her muscles to waste, and leaving her unable to pick up her children. Poignantly, she wrote: 'For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry.
'Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family's life, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.'
Her biggest fear was that her young children would forget her. 'My son might have a few memories, but he'll probably start confusing them with pictures he sees or stories he hears,' she wrote.
'I didn't really ever get to take care of my daughter. I was gone for almost half of her first year of life. I don't know . . . whether she will feel or remember, when I am gone, that I am her mother.'
Tatiana need not have been afraid. For if there is one woman who understands only too well the importance of remembering, it is her mother. In her own private, gentle, yet determined way, Caroline will take the reins, guiding the Kennedy family through yet another torment.
'She understands that grief, family bonds and healing are pretty fragile, and that protecting them from public consumption is an act of care,' J Randy Taraborrelli explains. 'Being present for the next generation isn't about stepping into a spotlight as much as it's about providing stability, reassurance, and a sense that the family endures.
'That impulse has shaped her entire adult life. It's ingrained. It's Jackie, through and through. As her only daughter, Caroline has it, too. She will always step up.'