First, one of the pages handed me a note, which read, “Your office on four”—so I went out to the cloakroom, booth four, and it was one of my young staffers on the phone from the office, asking, “Do you still want to give that speech?” I thought this was odd, and he said, “You don’t have to give it, you can go home right now.” And I said no, I wanted to give it and went back out on the floor.
Then the Democratic Clerk, Barry Sullivan, a Tip O’Neill appointee from Boston, took me aside and said, “Terri wants to see you. Now.”
Back in the cloakroom, I was met by one of the Navy physicians on call for members of Congress; I was taken to his office where Terri, my administrative assistant and protector, was waiting for me.
She said, “You are going to George Washington University Hospital right now.” She and the doctor walked me down a back stairway and into a car that was already running with someone behind the wheel.
We drove to GWU, where we pulled up to a rear exit door. I was put in a wheelchair and rolled down an empty hallway and into a single private room, where they immediately laid me down on the bed and a nurse came by to take my blood pressure and put in an IV. No checking in, no showing my insurance card. Terri said, “I’ll see you in the morning. We’re going to get some help for you, tomorrow,” and then she left.
My mind was spinning that all this could be pulled off. Actually, my mind was just spinning, because all the pills I had taken were finally reaching their full impact. I blacked out and didn’t wake up until the next morning.
By then, Terri and Dr. Ron Smith had arranged to drive with me to Father Martin’s Ashley, the secluded rehab retreat on Chesapeake Bay. I slept the whole way there, I was so out of it.
When I realized where we were, I said to Ron, “I can’t stay here, my career will be ruined if I do.”
He looked at me and said, “Patrick, your career will be ruined if you don’t stay here.”
Once I was settled, my office issued a statement that I had decided to “temporarily step aside from my normal routine to ensure that I am being as vigilant as possible in my recovery. I hope that in some small way my decision to be proactive and public in my effort to remain healthy can help remove the stigma that has served as a barrier for many Americans reluctant to get the help they need.” We didn’t specify how long I would stay.
—
FATHER MARTIN’S ASHLEY was different from Mayo. It focused more on spirituality, and the group therapy sessions weren’t as aggressive as the Mayo process groups. I liked the enhanced spiritual component but sort of missed the in-your-face confrontations. I needed them both.
Perhaps because I had really scared myself with the Ativan incident in the House, I found myself being unusually honest at Father Martin’s. The worksheets I filled out by hand on the first day contained more hard truth than most of what I had shared with Jim Ramstad when he was my sponsor. They asked very detailed questions about situations of “powerlessness” and “unmanageability” and I did a very harsh accounting in which, for the first time, I blamed only myself for these situations.
I stayed there for a month, leaving just before July Fourth weekend, and then went up to the Cape to spend time with my father. He spoke less than usual, and when he did he occasionally came up with incorrect words because of his deteriorating condition.
I was actually touched that a couple times during that visit, when he called out to me he referred to me as “Splash,” not Patrick. Splash was the name of his absolute most beloved dog. I joked with my brother afterward about this, saying that if I was going to be in the doghouse with the family, I was glad to be associated with the favorite dog.
But he could still tell stories and ask me to retell stories, which is what we loved to do. Sometimes we would sit on the front porch and look out over the ocean, but mostly he would sit in the piano room. If there were a couple of visitors someone would play the piano and we would get out the old song sheets and have a sing-along. The last time he and I sang together that summer, we did a duet of “You Are My Sunshine,” and then he and Vicki sang “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”
He was still working, or at least work was being done with his input and approval. In mid-July, his HELP Committee staff completed the first draft of his version of a healthcare reform bill, beating out the other Senate committees drafting theirs. On August 4, he was one of twenty-six senators who signed a letter to the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, demanding that they promptly issue regulations that would allow the Mental Health Parity Act to be properly implemented by clarifying the law’s scope of services and medical management requirements. And he was still working on his memoir, which Vicki would read aloud to him.
One of the things he still was able to do was go visit his sister, my Aunt Eunice. Now in her late eighties, Eunice had had several medical setbacks, including a series of small strokes over the past two years, from which she continued to miraculously come back. She was there at the house with my uncle Sarge Shriver, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for some time. My dad was taken over to her house almost every day, and the two of them would sit out on the back patio overlooking Nantucket Sound.
I was, by this time, starting to make a lot of notes about what I would say at my father’s memorial service. My rehab at Father Martin’s was the first one where I wasn’t drafting letters to my father about all the things I thought he should know, the things we still needed to discuss. Instead, on whatever paper I had lying around—the backs of mental healthcare policy memos, my American Express bill—I was writing about what he had done, what we had shared, what it had meant to me.
It was also interesting to be doing this as, just down the road, I knew my cousins were doing the same thing for Aunt Eunice. And as I thought about my own life and what I might do next, the idea that I wouldn’t run for my seat again was becoming very present in my mind.
I had recently spoken about this, very briefly, to my dad—on the back of a big motorboat owned by his friend and local physician Larry Ronan from Mass General. Each time he boarded the boat, and he had to take my shoulder to steady himself to get on, I took it as some form of what could be our last hug. And then we would just cruise around the bay. We were sitting there talking about politics, leaning with our heads close so we could hear over the wind and the sound of the engine, when out of nowhere he said, “You know, you don’t have to run for public office anymore. You can do what makes you happy.”
I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say, and so upset that the first thing I did after we got off the boat was ask Dr. Ronan if he’d write me a prescription for Adderall. I claimed I couldn’t get ahold of my regular doctor. He just looked at me with a smile that let me know he wasn’t falling for that excuse. And then he said, “No.” I spent the rest of the day worrying he would tell Vicki what I had done, and consumed with anxiety that I still couldn’t handle my own feelings without a pill or a drink.
But, regardless of my anxiety attack, what my father said made a huge impact. He was giving me his blessing to think about what would make me happiest and healthiest.
What would I do? I felt like two family legacies were staring me in the face.
There was my father’s life in the public eye in the Senate, with a guiding hand and resonant voice in so many different kinds of decisions and emergencies and issues. And there was my Aunt Eunice’s life, focused on one set of issues, one set of disenfranchised Americans, trying to address their needs from inside the system and outside, and when necessary even instigating the creation of new systems; she was one of the first to see the need for what we now call “public-private partnerships,” which acknowledge that government funding can only be part of the solution.
While a lot of people knew what my father had done, many did not appreciate just how much Aunt Eunice had accomplished and what was still being done
in her name for neonatal care, children’s health, and developmental disabilities.
I had spent my entire life trying to live up to my father’s expectations. Once he was gone, was I going to keep aspiring to be my father? Or should I actually aspire to be a version of my Aunt Eunice on the issues of brain disease that mattered to me the most?
This all assumed, of course, that I would be able to get some sustained control over my illnesses and start building an actual life for myself.
Because if I didn’t, I might not live long enough to aspire to either.
—
IN EARLY AUGUST, Aunt Eunice had a major stroke, and my Shriver cousins came rushing to the Cape to see her in the hospital. She died early in the morning on August 11 at the age of eighty-eight, and that evening the family held a private Mass at their home. My father was there for the prayer service, which was a wonderful surprise for the extended family. For many, it was the last time they would see him.
Two weeks later, it was our turn to say good-bye to our father, who had spent the last few days before his death watching old James Bond movies and finally letting go of his fierce grip on life. Sadly, I wasn’t there when he died.
By this point, I was appearing on my father’s behalf at events he couldn’t attend. I was scheduled to go to Northern California to do an appearance with United Farm Workers president Arturo Rodriguez. My father was close to Rodriguez, just as he had been with his predecessor Cesar Chavez, a relationship that spanned the years from farmworkers’ rights to immigration reform.
I was with Rodriguez outside a farmworkers’ hall in Santa Rosa, a very rudimentary building with an aluminum roof, and it was jammed with farmworkers at the end of their day. Just before we went in, I got a call from Vicki, who said that my father was very close to death—but that I shouldn’t drop everything to fly back because I would never make it in time, and my leaving a public event abruptly could trigger a lot of media attention when we just wanted him to pass peacefully.
So I hung up my cell phone and went in. When Arturo introduced me as “el hijo de Ted Kennedy,” the workers immediately rose and chanted, “Viva Kennedy! Viva Kennedy!”
In my broken Spanish, I started, “Yo soy el hijo de Ted Kennedy,” and there was applause. I did my best to hold back my tears and get through my remarks, and when I was finished they chanted again, “Viva Kennedy!” They presented me with an album of all the pictures of my dad with farmworker leaders, back to the 1960s. And then several people told stories to reinforce the importance of immigration reform, these heartrending stories, about family separations, fear, intimidation, and exploitation. But they all came back around to how my father and my family had stood with them. They were so warm and loving, saying, “Please tell your father we love him and we are praying for him.”
As we walked outside and were getting in the car, my phone rang again. It was Vicki, who told me my father had just died, with family members surrounding him. And I realized that he had passed at exactly the time that all these people in a big hut in the valley surrounded by vineyards were yelling, “Viva Kennedy!”
I flew home in tears. And when I got to Hyannis, I realized that everyone had already been told what their responsibilities would be over the next few days of events, starting with a vigil with the casket in the house and ending with a funeral Mass in Boston, which would be broadcast on national television because President Obama had agreed to deliver a eulogy and three past presidents would be in attendance.
I had assumed all along that both Teddy and I would give eulogies—I had been drafting mine for weeks—and Kara, who was much more private, would read a prayer. Instead, I was informed that there was only time for Teddy to give a eulogy. I would be reading a prayer.
While nobody said this out loud, they clearly were afraid that it would be too risky to let me speak on live television, especially right before the President. They may have had some reasons to be concerned, and for me one of the hardest parts of being in recovery has been owning up to that and letting go of it. But, I can still vividly recall my seething anger and outrage at being told there just wasn’t going to be time for me to eulogize my father, that I had been deemed not worthy to pay tribute to him because I had an illness that could be embarassing or inconvenient. Hearing this triggered every issue I ever had with my dad during my entire life, making me feel like I was going to be in permanent emotional exile from my family if I backed down and accepted this. So I made it very clear to Paul Kirk—then executor of my dad’s estate, and the messenger of this news—that I was going to deliver a eulogy after my brother and before the President whether they liked it or not.
My father’s casket was brought to the house in Hyannis, draped with an American flag, and placed in the sunroom, where most members of the family, young and old, took turns standing vigil. I then rode in the front seat of the hearse as the casket was brought to the JFK Presidential Library for a two-day public viewing.
There were so, so many people lined up outside the library for the viewing each day. It was an awesome tribute to our father but also pretty daunting, because Teddy, Kara, and I felt that at least two of us should be there in the receiving line at any given time. And that was a lot of receiving.
At the end of the first day, Kara had already gone back to the hotel and Teddy and I were still shaking hands and accepting warm condolences when a woman came up who we hadn’t seen in years. She had been one my father’s secretaries in Washington decades earlier, before he had married Vicki. She approached us and handed us a sealed envelope, which had our three names written on it and the words “To be opened after my death.”
Teddy and I were shaking; we didn’t know what to do. So when the receiving line finished we went up to the seventh floor of the library, the Family Room, and we shut the door and called Kara. We told her we didn’t need to open the letter right away, we could bring it back to the hotel and do it later, when we were all together. And she said we should open it immediately, so we did, and we read it aloud to her over the cell phone on speaker. We were all in tears, sobbing.
It was a beautiful letter, so moving, full of all the things you’d ever want to hear from your father. It had been written during the 1980s, and one of the things he said—which I so needed to hear at that very moment—was that he hoped that, if we felt comfortable doing it, we would speak at his funeral.
I took this as a sign directly from heaven that I had made the right decision to fight for my right to eulogize him.
The next evening there was an invitation-only memorial service at the library, where mostly his Senate colleagues spoke—they told wonderful stories—followed by my cousin Caroline. And the next morning we were all at the funeral Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston.
My sister, Kara, my step-siblings, Curran and Caroline, and a number of our young nieces, nephews, and cousins read prayers or quotes. My brother, Teddy, gave a really wonderful eulogy. He delivered his last lines, “I will try to live up to the high standard he set for all of us when he said, ‘The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.’ I love you, Dad, I always will, and I miss you already.” And then I quickly got up from my place on the front pew, squeezed past Kara and Vicki, and met Teddy as he walked past the casket for a long embrace. I walked to the podium, almost forgetting to kneel and cross myself, and pulled out my eulogy.
My voice was shaky, my brain was shaky, and I was trying hard to stick to what I had written.
“When I was a kid, I couldn’t breathe,” I began, and I talked about how my early health struggles had a silver lining, because they had led my busy father to spend more time with me. Most of my eulogy was about my childhood with him because, honestly, most of what happened after then was still too raw for me. I didn’t talk a lot about politics, except about what an honor it was to serve with him. But I did want to say one thing about the last thing we had done toge
ther as legislators, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.
“This bill represented not only a legal victory for fifty-four million Americans with mental illness who are being denied equal health insurance—but as one of those fifty-four million Americans, I felt he was also fighting for me to help ease the burden of stigma and shame that accompanies treatment.”
When I talked about how he would be remembered, I made a point to include all the children he had helped raise. “Most Americans will remember Dad as a good and decent hard-charging senator,” I said. “But to Teddy, Curran, Caroline, Kara, and I, we will always remember him as a loving and devoted father.”
“I love you, Dad,” I finished, “and you will always live in my heart forever.”
When I came down off the podium, President Obama, waiting to go up, gave me a warm embrace, and Vicki gave me the most relieved hug and kiss ever.
We flew with his casket to Washington that afternoon, and he was buried in the same spacious plot as his brothers in Arlington National Cemetery.
—
WHEN I RETURNED to the office, there was, among all the condolences, a very kind note from Al Franken, who had just taken Paul Wellstone’s seat in the Senate. He said he wished he had been able to serve with my father (although he did fondly remember attending a Democratic Caucus retreat where my dad called the square dance one night). He complimented my brother and me for our eulogies. And then he said something intriguingly honest.
A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction Page 29