The great tragedy of Edward Kennedy

There's something called a Sacred Heart Lamp in the kitchen of our home in Ireland. The little red light signals that this is a traditional Catholic household.

Anyway, when I was a child, on one side of that lamp was a photo of the pope — John XXIII is the first I can recall — and on the other side was a photo of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his wife, Jackie. This combination said a lot about Ireland and about how the Kennedys were seen there.

Given all that's been written about JFK's affairs, Jackie's affairs and the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne in Senator Edward Kennedy's car 40 years ago, one would expect the Kennedy cult to have lost a lot of its mystique, but not where I come from. Part of that's because people are very proud that the great-grandson of Thomas Fitzgerald, who left Limerick with nothing in 1854, became the 35th president and leader of the most powerful country in the world in 1960. Another reason is that Edward Kennedy played an important role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. For those who have forgotten how savage that war was, yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten and his14-year-old grandson by the IRA in County Sligo. Later that same day, an IRA bomb killed 18 British soldiers in County Down.

The Shakespearean story of the Kennedys

But the real reason for the Kennedy worship, I think, has less to do with politics and more to do with the tragic nature of life. Today, we think that we are the masters of the universe. With enough education and ambition, that job, that car, that house, that yacht can be ours. A beautiful partner and two perfect children will complete the picture. We can have it all!

In the world of the Sacred-Heart-lamp people, however, there are no such illusions. Misfortune can happen at any moment and that perfect child could fall into a river and drown, or the beautiful partner might get a fatal disease or the hero could be killed by a fanatic in Dallas or Los Angeles. In other words, we are not the masters of the universe. We are not gods. The tragedy of the rich, handsome, powerful Kennedys confirms this.

Shakespeare is loved for his comedies, but it was his tragedies that made him the greatest dramatist of all. In Julius Caesar, Mark Antony says, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." The life of Edward Kennedy was filled with tragedy, but it would be really tragic if he were to be remembered more for his personal and political mistakes than for the many good things he did. "I have done the state some service," says Othello, and that's how we should remember the statesman, senator and legislator Ted Kennedy.