Caroline Kennedy has publicly paid tribute to her youngest daughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, for the first time since her untimely death.
Tatiana, the granddaughter of former President John F. Kennedy and former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, died in December at age 35, weeks after revealing her terminal cancer diagnosis in a poignant essay for The New Yorker.
Over the weekend, Caroline, 68, delivered a speech at the annual John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award ceremony, held at her late father’s presidential library in Boston.
“Politics is a family endeavor and I am so grateful to the members of my family who are here tonight and whose support over many years has kept my father’s spirit alive and made this institution a living memorial,” Caroline said, while welcoming the newcomers to the ceremony, including Tatiana’s in-laws, Garrett and Mary Moran.
Her voice wavering, she continued: “Most of all, we remember Tatiana, who served on the board of this library, and represented everything my parents stood for in her beautiful, amazing and too-short life.”
The crowd broke out into an extended applause as Caroline mouthed “thank you.”
Tatiana, the middle child of Caroline and Edwin Schlossberg, died December 30. In her New Yorker essay, titled “A Battle with My Blood,” she disclosed she had been diagnosed with a rare type of acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer.
“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the JFK Library Foundation said in a statement at the time. The post was signed “George, Edwin and Josephine Moran, Ed, Caroline, Jack, Rose and Rory.”
Tatiana is survived by her husband, George Moran, their three-year-old son, Edwin, and their one-year-old daughter, Josephine. She’s also survived by her parents, her brother Jack Schlossberg, 33, and her sister Rose Schlossberg, 37, who is married to Rory McAuliffe.
In May, Jack opened up about his grief, confessing that he doesn’t think he’ll ever “process” his sister’s death.
“The world will never be the same for me, not only since she passed away, but since she was diagnosed with cancer about two years ago,” he told Vanity Fair. “She was my best friend. We could finish each other’s sentences. And no one loved me or was a bigger fan of me of anyone else than my sister.
“So I miss her all the time. Every day I think about her. But it also really does motivate me to do everything I can with every waking moment I have,” Jack said, “because I realize it could have just as easily been me, and I have an obligation to her, not just to myself, to make the most out of my precious life and all that I’ve been given in this life to give back to others and make sure that we can fund cures for the type of cancer that took her life, and for other types of cancer.”