SENATOR EDWARD Moore Kennedy made his last trip to Washington, when the patriarch of the Kennedy family was laid to rest near his assassinated brothers John and Robert in Arlington National Cemetery.
Accompanied by his widow, Vicki, Mr Kennedy’s flag-draped casket was flown to Andrews Air Force Base, then driven to the steps of the Capitol, where hundreds of members of Congress and staffers waited. They sang America the Beautiful, after which well-wishers burst into an impromptu rendition of When Irish Eyes are Smiling.
The hearse drove down Constitution Avenue, past the Lincoln Memorial, across the Memorial Bridge and into the cemetery as the sun was setting on Saturday. At the graveside, Cardinal Thomas McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, quoted Kennedy’s recent letter to Pope Benedict XVI, in which the senator said he’d been “an imperfect being but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path”.
It was the culmination of three days resembling a royal funeral. The morning started at the Kennedy library in Boston, from whence Mr Kennedy’s remains were transported under pelting rain to the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. He had prayed there for his daughter, Kara, who recovered from lung cancer, and then for himself, when he was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumour.
In his eulogy, President Barack Obama said: “We do not weep for him today because of the prestige attached to his name or his office. We weep because we loved this kind and tender hero.”
Mr Kennedy meant many things to many people. To the Irish politicians, north and south, who travelled to the wake and funeral services in Boston, he was a guarantor of the peace process.
Matt Reilly, an Irish emigrant and retired New York bus driver, drove to Boston to watch the cortege in the rain. “Teddy Kennedy was the link that brought Ireland and the US together,” he explained.
Cinde Warmington, a lawyer from New Hampshire, loved Kennedy for his struggle to achieve universal healthcare, and held up a placard urging US senators to vote for President Obama’s reforms. Rhoda Johnson, a black nurse, said Mr Kennedy “was just a regular person, like your neighbour”.
Down the street from the funeral Mass stood a lone trumpeter wearing a fedora and crumpled suit, looking for all the world like Louis Armstrong. He played Ave Maria, then, as the hearse rolled by, Taps. He was Massillon Laporte, a Haitian emigrant who had taken the bus all night from Montreal to pay his respects to Mr Kennedy. "We have to appreciate good people, because there are so few of them," he said.