Ted Kennedy Tells His Own Story

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Lois Romano has this story today in the Washington Post on the book that is due out tomorrow. She describes a couple of powerful moments during the writing of it that give us a window into what it was like for Kennedy to be looking at the end of a remarkable life and trying to figure out what it all meant:

One day at lunch, Kennedy asked [publisher Jonathan] Karp how he thought the sessions were going. “I said I thought they were going well, that the stories were great. ‘What I don’t understand is how you dealt with all the loss,’ ” Karp recalls responding.

A few hours later, Kennedy came back to Karp. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Kennedy said. “I think the reason I have been so restless in my life is that I have been trying to stay ahead of the darkness, to just keep moving to stay ahead of the despair.”

Karp says there was only one time Kennedy openly wept.

“We were talking about family and how it fell to him to inform his father about JFK’s death,” said Karp, referring to Joseph P. Kennedy, who already had suffered a stroke. “The senator began describing the day to us and going up to his father’s room — and then he broke down in tears. He couldn’t continue. What was so striking to me was that the event was still so raw for him.”