Three decades after he buried two slain older brothers, Senator Edward Kennedy (67) took on the weighty task of leading his tragedy-stricken family through the ordeal of John F. Kennedy jnr's death.
The youngest of eight brothers and sisters, the Democratic lawmaker stepped up to his role as patriarch of the celebrated political clan and surrogate father to Mr Kennedy. The senator led family members yesterday aboard the coast guard ship from which the ashes of Mr Kennedy, his wife and his sister-in-law were to be scattered at sea near Woods Hole, Massachusetts, yesterday after being cremated a day earlier.
The death of Mr Kennedy (38), left his sister Ms Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg the only surviving member of the late president's immediate family.
Ironically, the tragedy came nearly 30 years to the day after Ted Kennedy survived a car accident at Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, which left a young campaign worker dead and effectively killed off his chances of becoming president.
In the accident's aftermath, Mr Kennedy - who endured the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy in 1963 and that of his brother Robert during a 1968 presidential bid - famously mused that the family might be prey to a "curse".
Other Kennedys whose lives were cut short included his eldest brother, Joseph, who died during a second World War bombing mission in 1944, and an elder sister, Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, who died in a 1948 plane accident.
A drug overdose and a skiing accident claimed the lives of two of his nephews.
The senator himself endured the end of his marriage to his wife Joan in the 1980s; cancer took a leg from his son Edward Jr; and a night of carousing with his nephew William Kennedy Smith in 1991 led to the latter's trial and acquittal on rape charges.
The senator - one of the legislative body's senior members and widely regarded as one of its most influential members and finest orators owes his bowed gait to a 1960s plane crash that left him with a broken back.
Only rarely does his rich, bass voice - which so often fills the senate with passionate rhetoric - express inner anguish, but in a 1994 eulogy for his brother John's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, he provided a glimpse.
"She never wanted public notice," the New York Daily quoted him as saying, "in part, I think, because it brought back painful memories of an unbearable sorrow, endured in the glare of a million lights."
"It's like the boxer, the guy who just keeps standing," Caryl Rivers, a Boston University journalism professor who covered the Kennedy administration as a newspaper reporter, told USA Today. "He just keeps getting hit and hit and just keeps getting up," the daily quoted her as saying.
Over the last few days, much of his energy seems to have been devoted to softening the blow for his loved ones.
"He's trying to reach out to as many (family members) as possible, including Caroline Kennedy," a source close to the family said on Wednesday, adding that the senator himself was doing "as well as can be expected".