Maria Shriver leads emotional Kennedy family tributes to Tatiana Schlossberg with heartbreaking message
SOURCE:Daily Mail
Tributes have started pouring in for President John F Kennedy's granddaughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, who died of blood cancer on Tuesday at the age of 35.
The Kennedy scion's death was announced via the social media accounts for the JFK Library Foundation on behalf of her heartbroken relatives.
'Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,' the post reads, signed by 'George, Edwin and Josephine Moran, Ed, Caroline, Jack, Rose and Rory'.
Schlossberg was the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, whose parents were John F Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, and designer Edwin Schlossberg.
Following the news, Maria Shriver took to Instagram to share her memories of her cousin. Shriver is the daughter of Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy, JFK's sister.
'I return to this space today to pay tribute to my sweet, beloved Tatiana, who left this earth today,' she wrote. 'I return to this space to pay tributes and honor her loving and supportive family, who came together and did everything they possibly could to help her.
'I return to this space heartbroken because Tatiana loved life,' Shriver continued. 'She loved her life and she fought like hell to try to save it.'
'I cannot make sense of this,' Shriver said. 'I cannot make any sense of it at all. None. Zero.'
Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of JFK, has died from blood cancer at the age of 35, just six weeks after she revealed her diagnosis
Schlossberg (second from right) was the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, whose parents were John F Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, and designer Edwin Schlossberg. She is pictured with her parents and brother Jack Schlossberg in 2023
Former First Lady of California Maria Shriver led the family's tributes
She went on to remember her cousin as a 'great journalist' who 'used her words to educate others about the earth and how to save it,' and said Schlossberg 'created a beautiful life with her extraordinary husband, George, and children, Eddie and Josie.'
'She was valiant, strong, courageous,' Shriver said.
The former First Lady of California then went on to say her heart has always been with Caroline Kennedy, Schlossberg's mother, who she said has been a 'rock' and a 'source of love' to the family.
At that point, Shriver asked for prayers for the family.
'Whatever your faith, please pray for Tatiana and her grieving family,' she wrote, saying the mother-of-two 'was the light, the humor [and] the joy' of the family.
'She was smart, wicked smart as they say, and sassy. She was fun, funny, loving, caring, a perfect daughter, sister, mother, cousin, niece, friend, all of it...'
'Those of us left behind will make sure Eddie and Josie know what a beautiful, courageous spirit their mother was and will always be,' Shriver vowed, saying Schlossberg took 'after her extraordinary mother, Caroline.'
'May we all hold Tatiana's family in our collective embrace, not just today, but in the days ahead and may each of you who read this know how lucky you are to be alive right now.
'Please pause and honor your life,' she concluded. 'It truly is such a gift.'
Schlossberg revealed how she felt when doctors told her she had acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024 in a poignant essay for the New Yorker
She praised her husband, George Moran, for his support following the diagnosis
In a poignant essay for the New Yorker, Schlossberg revealed how she felt when doctors told her she had acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024.
She noted that she had no symptoms and was 'one of the healthiest people I knew' when doctors told her she only had a year left to live.
Doctors only found the disease through routine blood tests after she gave birth to her second child when one physician noticed an imbalance in her white blood cell count, she wrote.
'A normal white-blood-cell count is around four to eleven thousand cells per microliter. Mine was a hundred and thirty-one thousand cells per microliter,' Schlossberg recounted in the essay.
'It could just be something related to pregnancy and delivery, the doctor said, or it could be leukemia.'
The journalist was eventually diagnosed with a 'rare mutation called Inversion 3' which 'could not be cured by a standard course.'
Schlossberg said she was bewildered by the news, and said despite being nine months pregnant, she was routinely exercising and 'didn't feel sick.'
'I did not - could not - believe that they were talking about me. I had swum a mile in the pool the day before, nine months pregnant. I wasn’t sick. I didn’t feel sick. I was actually one of the healthiest people I knew,' she wrote.
Schlossberg studied at Yale for her undergraduate degree, where she met Moran, now an attending urologist at Columbia University
Schlossberg also used the piece to praise her husband, George Moran, for his support throughout her treatment, writing: 'George did everything for me that he possibly could.
'He talked to all the doctors and insurance people that I didn’t want to talk to; he slept on the floor of the hospital; he didn’t get mad when I was raging on steroids and yelled at him that I did not like Schweppes ginger ale, only Canada Dry.'
She added: 'He would go home to put our kids to bed and come back to bring me dinner. I know that not everyone can be married to a doctor, but if you can, it’s a very good idea.
'He is perfect, and I feel so cheated and so sad that I don’t get to keep living the wonderful life I had with this kind, funny, handsome genius I managed to find.'
Schlossberg studied at Yale for her undergraduate degree, where she met Moran, now an attending urologist at Columbia University.
She later earned a master's degree in United States history from the University of Oxford and pursued a career as a journalist.
The couple married in 2017 at the Kennedy compound on Martha's Vineyard, with former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick officiating the ceremony.
They lived in a $7.68 million apartment in New York City's Upper East Side, but in Schlossberg's New Yorker essay, she revealed she spent much of the last year of her life in and out of the hospital.
Schlossberg met Moran while studying at Yale, and share two children, Edwin, three, and Josephine, one
Schlossberg's death marks the latest tragedy to befall Caroline Kennedy. The family is pictured speaking with the Prince of Wales in 2022
Schlossberg wrote in her essay that she spent five weeks at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital after giving birth, before she was transferred to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a bone-marrow transplant.
She then underwent grueling chemotherapy at home, and in January, she joined a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy against certain blood cancers.
But then, she found out she had just a year left to live.
'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,' Schlossberg wrote.
'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 death now marks the latest tragedy to befall Caroline, whose father, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, five days before Caroline's sixth birthday.
Five years later Caroline's uncle Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.
In 1994, Caroline's mother Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis - the former First Lady of the United States - died of lymphoma at the age of sixty four.
And in 1999 Caroline lost her only sibling, John F. Kennedy Jr. JFK Jr, also known as John John, crashed his plane into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard.
The accident also killed his wife Carolyn Besette and Carolyn's sister Lauren Bessette.