The scattering at sea of the ashes of John F Kennedy Jnr, his wife Carolyn and her sister, Lauren Bessette, attracted an attention in the United States and elsewhere that might be regarded as morbid. The apparent obsession of Americans with the Kennedys is, however, as understandable as the fascination of Europeans with royalty.
Europe, old and steeped in history as it is, looks to its past for solace. Kings, empires, cathedrals encapsulate a greatness that is past and generate retrospective pride. The United States is young, often brash, ambitious and to some extent egalitarian. Its world view, its values and its pride are summed up in the concept known as the "American Dream" and no family embodies that concept as completely as the Kennedys.
First there was the archetypal "struggling immigrant" in the shape of Patrick Kennedy from County Wexford who fled famine and pestilence in the Ireland of the 1840s. Successive generations produced other archetypal figures. The tough businessman Joseph P Kennedy, often by merciless means, amassed a great fortune. Joseph Jnr epitomised the generation lost in the second World War. President John F Kennedy built the American Camelot on an idealistic liberal foundation. He and his brother Robert lost their lives to assassins.
The Kennedys have now carried this mixture of wealth, glamour and tragedy into another generation. The story combines not only America's dream but its nightmare as well. If America had a Shakespeare, Mr David Von Drehle wrote in the Washington Post, he would have written about the Kennedys. "He would understand immediately that here is all the stuff of human life, out-sized and compelling. Ambition, wealth, compassion, power, sex, love. And death."
The tale is so American that to lose faith in it would, for many Americans, be to lose faith in America itself. With all its twists and turns, it carries the germ of an Irish dream as well. The memorial Mass at Old St Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan yesterday, attended by the great and the good of Irish America, conveyed the message of a people which struggled from the poverty of its own land to succeed when given opportunity in another.
Outside America the success stories of the Kennedys and the accompanying series of tragic events has no greater resonance than among the Irish. Vicarious pride in the Kennedys and what they represent remains strong despite the latter-day tarnishing of great reputations, and although opportunities in some cases are now as great at home as they are abroad.
With the death of John F Kennedy Jnr, however, the focus of attention may finally shift from America's most famous family. President Kennedy's daughter Caroline keeps herself from the public eye. Other members of the current generation have attracted far less media and public interest. They may never completely avoid the adulation of their fellow citizens but the Kennedys may begin to move from centre stage when the attention engendered by this latest tragedy recedes.