Funeral a fond farewell to Sen. Edward Kennedy

(NECN: Greg Wayland, Boston, Mass.) – It was a final flowering. Grief, joy, and prayers winding together in one of the city’s most beautiful churches filled with some of the world’s most famous and powerful people. Yo-Yo Ma would play Bach at the offertory. Placido Domingo would sing at communion time. But it would be the tribute by the senator’s oldest son — long out of the limelight — that many would remember the longest. Crippled as a child by the loss of his leg to cancer, Edward Kennedy, Jr., recalled the day his father insisted they go sledding. Son Patrick, the Rhode Island congressman, recalled how childhood struggles with asthma confined and isolated him, and how his father broke through that isolation. The eulogy was offered by the President of the United States, Barack Obama. Scriptural readings and then the responsorial psalms were read by children of the family. At least one had the ring of a political petition. The Cardinal Archbishop of Boston Sean O’Malley offered the final commendation: And so it ended, in song, poetry and prayer, among the famous and powerful in the humble neighborhood called Mission Hill. The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay might have had such a bittersweet moment in mind when she wrote, “we die in darkness and are buried in the rain.” NECN’s Greg Wayland reports.