My aunt had a benign brain tumor removed a month ago. It's amazing the way something like this affects your family; the symptoms are sneaky, and one goes from healthy (besides a couple 'episodes') to facing a life-threatening condition in a matter of hours. My thoughts are certainly with him.

I too cannot imagine the United States Senate or the Democratic Party without Edward M. Kennedy. Best wishes to the Senator and to his family.

I posted this on the other Kennedy piece, but thought it more appropriate here, where people are more likely to be positive, and gentle in their judgments.
I met Senator Kennedy ten years ago at a mind-numbing private fundraiser in Atlanta. I watched as affluent suburbanites lined up for photos with the senator and marveled at his patience; I wondered what would drive a man who had accomplished so much already to endure events like that one. The answer? Senator Kennedy was willing to smile, and joke and pose for two hours so that, for fifteen minutes, he could urge people to treat children with mental disabilities more compassionately, and to support research in that area. It is a terrible irony that Senator Kennedy should be stricken with a disease that may affect his own mental capabilities. Let us honor his life's work to date with our thanks, our prayers (even for those of us who are agnostics) and our vote in November.

Amen.

Here's the contact information for Ted Kennedy. Give a call sending your thoughts.

Contact

Washington Office
p (202) 224-4543

Massachusetts Office
p (617) 565-3170
p (877) 472-9014

You can also go to TedKennedy.com where there's a place to send your best wishes.

I would imagine some intern is sorting through the messages and picking out some to send to the Senator. Having often had similar worries, I've come to realize that you can't go too wrong in life by erring on the side of kindness.

What a wonderful thing, to have touched so many people in your life. May he have the chance to reach many more.

If anyone can take on cancer, it's Kennedy. They played highlight from him on the senate floor today on Air America, I was terribly moved.

He is a giant, without a doubt one of the 10 greatest Senators in United States history.
Regardless of whether one agrees with his views and actions. While I suspect that he long ago came to terms with the impossible standards against which his life would be judged, he has nothing to apologize for. His record in the Senate is one neither John nor Robert would ever have been able to match had they attempted to remain in the Senate rather than sought the presidency.

He has carried the liberal torch with passion, commitment, eloquence and honor in a manner that has been in regrettably short supply during the past several decades, making his contribution all the more vital and important. Although he roars less frequently in recent years than he once did, measured by his enemies his greatness is all the more apparent and impressive.

My thoughts and prayers are with he and his family at this difficult time.

"He has carried the liberal torch with passion, commitment, eloquence and honor in a manner that has been in regrettably short supply during the past several decades, making his contribution all the more vital and important. Although he roars less frequently in recent years than he once did, measured by his enemies his greatness is all the more apparent and impressive."

At the beginning of the last 7+ years, he was the lone voice, in the wilderness, while everyone else (except Sen. Byrd, and perhaps a few others I didn't see) joined the crowd of the anonymous, continuing the Liberal tradition, against all the spite, the hate, the smug triumphalism that led to the war crime of torture, the crime against humanity that was and is the Iraq invasion and occupation.

The lone voice. But it shouted eloquently, roared above the hate-speech, the attacks, the ugliness. His agenda has always been, at core, health and eductaion, because he knows: in order to "better" oneself and one's context, one must be healthy, and have an education.

A flawed human. But an irreplaceable voice carrying the essential tradition, almost entirely alone at the beginning of these last 7+ years, but slowly others, in that anonymous crowd, began to wake up and catch up with him.

My thoughts and prayers are with he and his family at this difficult time.

Amen. And I'm agnostic.

I saw him once, from a distance. He came to speak at my high school -- but only to the senior class, because the auditorium wasn't big enough to contain the whole of the "baby boomer" student population. When he left the school, we were allowed by the teacher to watch out the window. He was stooped forward by then, as result of the plane crash and broken back, having only shortly before been in a full body cast for six months.

How would any of us have survived the assassination of a brother, then that accident, only to suffer the assassination of another brother?

And to this day he is pilloried by the NRA for having stood, for standing, for sanity. It's easier to name-call and insult than it is to understand grief. It also requires no courage.

Wealth isn't much of a shield. He has borne more than most of us ever will, and yet has endeavored to carry the torch for "a new generation of Americans".

When he finally does go, Massachusetts is going to be an emotionally-devastated basket-case.