Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former US President John F. Kennedy, has shared a deeply personal and carefully curated tribute to his late sister, Tatiana Schlossberg, on social media. The poignant post comes after Tatiana, an environmental journalist and author, died from blood cancer on 30 December at the age of 35.
A Carefully Curated Memorial on Instagram
On Monday, Jack Schlossberg posted a series of ten slides to his Instagram account, each featuring an excerpt from a poem or famous text. The presentation was unified by a consistent font and background style, indicating a thoughtful and deliberate effort to honour his sister's memory. The post was captioned simply with a single cherry blossom emoji, a symbol often associated with the fleeting nature of life.
The tribute quickly resonated with thousands, amassing nearly 40,000 likes and over a thousand supportive comments within just three hours. Followers flooded the comments with heart and broken heart emojis, expressing their condolences and sharing in the family's grief.
Tatiana's Own Words on Environmental Duty
The first slide featured not the words of a famous poet, but those of Tatiana herself. Jack chose a passage from her 2019 book, Inconspicuous Consumption, which examines the hidden environmental costs of daily life. The excerpt encapsulates her commitment to activism and her realistic yet hopeful outlook.
"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 past 10,000 years or so," Tatiana wrote.
She acknowledged the scale of the challenge, describing it as "hard work with possibly limited success for the rest of your life." Yet, she concluded with characteristic resolve and a touch of humour: "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 (?)."
A Sudden Diagnosis and Family Tragedy
Tatiana's death followed a shock diagnosis just six weeks earlier. She revealed in an essay for The New Yorker that she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in May 2024. Remarkably, she had experienced no symptoms and considered herself "one of the healthiest people I knew." The disease was discovered only through routine blood tests after she gave birth to her second child.
She was the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and designer Edwin Schlossberg. Her passing represents the latest in a series of profound tragedies for Caroline Kennedy, who lost her father to assassination at age five, her brother John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash, and her mother to lymphoma in 1994.
In her essay, Tatiana spoke movingly of her family's support during gruelling treatment and expressed anguish at causing her mother further pain. "For my whole life, I have tried to be good... to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry," she 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."
A Literary Tapestry of Consolation
Jack Schlossberg's tribute wove together a diverse tapestry of writings meant to console and reflect. Alongside his sister's own words, he included an excerpt from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick concerning the immortality of whales, and passages from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
The selection also featured poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, and Rita S. Beer. Further slides contained the Buddha's last words and a quote from his grandfather, President John F. Kennedy: "There are three things in life which are real: God, human folly and laughter. Since the first two are beyond our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third."
The collective message of the tribute paints a picture of a life dedicated to purpose, cut short too soon, and remembered with immense love and literary grace. It stands as a public testament to a sister's legacy and a brother's grief, connecting personal loss with universal themes of memory, endurance, and the enduring power of words.
