As I watched the news channels this past week covering the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, I couldn't help but be reminded of how the biggest people often take on the biggest causes.  It would be easy to trivialize the Senator's efforts by saying that all that was easy when you're that rich and have that big of a legacy.  Momentum, some would say, is easier kept going than started. 

The Kennedy's have always seemed bigger than life to me.  I remember the Inaguration of JFK and watching the funeral  after his assasination.  I remembering watching Robert Kennedy stare down the southern aristocracy that would've kept African Americans on plantations forever.  I remember the thirteen days in October and the Cuban Missile Crisis where literally the fate of the world hung in the balance of a former young senator from Massachusetts and I remember how cool under fire JFK seemed.

Even if you didn't like Ted's philosophy or his rhetoric, you have to admire his persistence, ambition, and courage.  Sure there were skeletons in the closet and poor judgements and bad choices, but we all have some of that, don't we?.  What was there was apparently a tireless and fearless worker who took the cause of the less fortunate and made it his own.  Maybe some of those causes were self serving and biased but in the end many of the people he intended to help he did.  Whether the motivation was guilt, duty, or just purely a sense of obligation, thousands benefited from his efforts.  My sense is that millions will in the future.

What I was amazed at more than anything were the revelations that in the last months of his life he was making phone calls, working the aisles, joking with colleagues, knowing that he was dying but not letting that make a difference.  As a fellow brain cancer survivor and a patient at Duke, I can tell you that the energy required to just get off the couch in the morning is incredible, much less to promote the causes as vigorously as he did.

The courage that is required to continue on when you've been given the news that you probably won't, takes a perspective on the present and a view of the future that can only be explained by those who have gotten that news. and continued on none the less.  The philsopher Erickson wrote that "We are what survives us".  In Ted Kennedy's case, his work with Civil Rights, HealthCare, and generally improving the lot of our less fortunate citizens will survive long after the rancor of devisive politics is forgotten.

While I don't generally understand the Democratic  Party's positions on nearly anything, I do understand Courage, Ambition, and an unbridled Joy for life when I see it. Once I was diagnosed with the same brain tumor as the Senator I looked past his politics and his positions to see an individual who used his life, energy, influence and posessions to make life a little better for those who had it a little less well off .  Besides, anyone who likes dogs and sailing has some redeemable qualities.

In the end, Ted Kennedy will be remembered for mattering and being useful for so many who feel like they aren't.  We should all be fortunate to have an advocate in our lives like Ted.