Michael Kennedy and Ethan Frome?

Bobby and Ethel with their new born son
Michael LeMoyne Kennedy (1958 - 1997

A picture in this morning's paper shows a nine or ten year old Michael Kennedy with his - to me and many others - awesome father, Senator Robert Kennedy, just before his father was assassinated after winning the California primary.

Bobby died a winner, a tough act to follow for his eleven children. They probably had to compete fiercely just for HIS attention while he was alive.

After J.F K's death in Dallas, I understand Robert was seeking answers to the BIG QUESTIONS . He read Albert Camus, the humanist existentialist, whose recurring theme was the ABSURD - to be an infinitely sensitive being in an eternally INDIFFERENT universe. Like Camus' death - he was killed in a car accident not long after he received the Nobel prize for literature- Michael's death was illustrative of the ABSURD.

If the reporting is truthful, Michael Kennedy died a rather foolish death, reckless jock playing on a dangerous ski slope. A family affair?

His father's death was a mournful martyrdom: he was perceived as a powerful friend of hated Israel by a deranged young Arab. When I first heard about Michael's death on the ski slope- colliding with a tree- I was reminded of the Edith Wharton novel, Ethan Frome.

My imagination was racing: Heartbroken and depressed he found his Corbury Hill- the perfect place to end it all. But alone with no Mattie Silver to share his fate.

My imagination was quickly checked by the next news report. Michael, a friend said, had a wonderful sense of humor and could always see the silly side of things.

They both died still quite young, Robert Kennedy and son Michael. In his moving short story "The Dead" James Joyce suggested that it is perhaps better to die in the heat of youthful passions - in full possession of one's faculties - than to merely fade pitifully into impotent and dull old age.