Tatiana Schlossberg, granddaughter of JFK, has died
Tatiana Schlossberg, daughter of Caroline Kennedy and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, has died following a battle with terminal cancer.
"Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning," the JFK Library Foundation said in a statement on Tuesday. "She will always be in our hearts."
The 35-year-old environmental journalist revealed in an emotional essay in The New Yorker last month that she was diagnosed with a "rare mutation" of acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024 after giving birth to her second child.
She wrote in the essay, "During the latest clinical trial, my doctor told me that he could keep me alive for a year, maybe. My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn’t remember me."
"My son might have a few memories, but he’ll probably start confusing them with pictures he sees or stories he hears," she wrote. "I didn’t ever really get to take care of my daughter -- I couldn’t change her diaper or give her a bath or feed her, all because of the risk of infection after my transplants. I was gone for almost half of her first year of life. I don’t know who, really, she thinks I am, and whether she will feel or remember, when I am gone, that I am her mother."
She ended her essay talking about trying to "live and be with" her children.
"But being in the present is harder than it sounds, so I let the memories come and go," she wrote. "So many of them are from my childhood that I feel as if I’m watching myself and my kids grow up at the same time. Sometimes I trick myself into thinking I’ll remember this forever, I’ll remember this when I’m dead. Obviously, I won’t. But since I don’t know what death is like and there’s no one to tell me what comes after it, I’ll keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember."
She's survived by her husband, George Moran, their young son and daughter, as well as her parents, Caroline Kennedy and Ed Schlossberg, and siblings Rose and Jack Schlossberg.
One of her relatives, the journalist and commentator Maria Shriver, remembered her as "valiant, strong, courageous" in a tribute posted on X.
"Tatiana was a great journalist, and she used her words to educate others about the earth and how to save it," Shriver, a niece of former President John F. Kennedy, said.
"Tatiana was the light, the humor, the joy," she continued. "She was smart, wicked smart, as they say, and sassy. She was fun, funny[,] loving, caring, a perfect daughter, sister, mother, cousin, niece, friend, all of it…"
