Caroline Kennedy's daughter Tatiana, an environmental journalist who died of acute myeloid leukemia in December, would have turned 36 on Tuesday, May 5
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Jack Schlossberg shared a video about the comfort he feels in the month of May on what would have been his late sister Tatiana Schlossberg's 36th birthday.
"Hey everybody, it's May," he said to his camera while riding in a car on Tuesday, May 5. "I want to talk a little bit about the month of May because it's a special month. It's the month when things surprise you. When nature says, 'It's all gonna be okay.' "
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The 33-year-old congressional candidate went on to talk about the seasonal changes that happen in May, when New York City finally begins to feel like it's coming out of winter and flowers begin to bloom, saying, "May hits you like a bus with a little bit of something I like to call surprise and delight."
He captioned the Instagram video, which didn't directly mention his sister's birthday: "Thoughts …. It’s gonna be okay !!"
Tatiana, the middle child of Caroline Kennedy and Ed Schlossberg, died on Dec. 30 after opening up about her grueling treatment for acute myeloid leukemia in a powerful New Yorker essay one month earlier. She was 35 years old.
In the emotional first-person story, she described her fears preparing to leave behind two young children, Eddie and Josie, and her husband, George Moran. She also expressed heartbreak to be adding more grief to her mother's story.
"For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry," Tatiana wrote.
"Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it," the environmental journalist continued.
In her essay, Tatiana also spoke about her family's support during her treatment, writing, "My parents and my brother and sister [Rose], too, have been raising my children and sitting in my various hospital rooms almost every day for the last year and a half. They have held my hand unflinchingly while I have suffered, trying not to show their pain and sadness in order to protect me from it."
"This has been a great gift," she added, "even though I feel their pain every day."
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Days after Tatiana's death, members of her famous political family gathered at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan — where her grandmother Jackie Kennedy was honored 32 years earlier — for a solemn funeral service.
Caroline, Ed, Rose and Jack arrived at the service together, and Tatiana's husband, George, brought their two children. Numerous extended family members were spotted at the church, including notable cousins Maria Shriver and Kerry Kennedy. Former President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State John Kerry, late-night television veteran David Letterman, Tatiana's wedding dress designer Carolina Herrera and The New Yorker editor David Remnick were among the other public figures in attendance.
On the day of the funeral, Jack remembered his older sister with an Instagram post that was captioned simply with a "🌸" emoji. The post shared 10 quotes from well-known writers and public figures, beginning with an excerpt from Tatiana's 2022 book, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have.
"It's up to us to create a country that takes seriously its obligations to the planet, to each other, and to the people who will be born into a world that looks different than ours has for the last 10,000 years or so," the book excerpt reads. "Essentially, what I'm describing is hard work with possibly limited success for the rest of your life. But we have to do it, and at least we will have the satisfaction of knowing we made things better. …Come on, it will be fun (?)."
The final slide in Jack's Instagram post showed him standing beside Tatiana seemingly during a January 2011 event at the U.S. Capitol, where the siblings are laughing with their right hands over their hearts.
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