The Grace of Tatianna Schlossberg

“Our language is the reflection of ourselves.”

- Cesar Chavez

Gauged by the headlines, the man of the year for 2025 was Donald Trump. He’s undoubtedly very happy, as those are the metrics that matter to him. For me, however, Tatianna Schlossberg, who died less than a week ago at but 35 years old, had a far greater and more meaningful impact on my life in 2025, and I hope that her story will resonate across this country long after the depredations of the current era have passed.

That story, so tragically short, is by now well known. Daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, granddaughter of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Tatianna was an environmental reporter whose most touching story turned out to be her own obituary, which she published in the November 22nd issue of The New Yorker under the headline, “A Battle with my Blood.” Who can forget her opening line? “When you are dying, at least in my limited experience, you start remembering everything.”

“at least in my limited experience”. That six-word phrase, coming between four words on either side of it, takes your breath away. So unassuming and yet so evocative, it pulls you at once into the story of a woman who has something important to say, something that you will not soon forget. Tatianna writes her short essay in plain language, using straightforward declarative sentences that invite your empathy but do not ask for your pity. They break your heart.

I have written before about Donald Trump’s assault on language and why that matters so much. I am hardly the only one to have remarked on this, of course, but I felt as I read “A Battle with my Blood” the hope of a revival of our language, of its role, not as a crude bludgeon of attack and degradation, but as a means of communicating thoughts to others and also to ourselves. For how can I know what I am really feeling until I have put it into words that I can understand? Our common language can be so beautiful when we use it carefully and thoughtfully.

What we have done to our language reflects what we have done – and continue to do – to our country and now to the world. We have vulgarized it, ripped from it any notion of nuance or modesty, deprived it of craftmanship and so of beauty. There is no poetry in it and no humanity. We have weaponized it, so that we can debase those whom we do not like and divide us against ourselves.

“A Battle with my Blood” was published on November 22nd, 2025, the 62nd anniversary of the assassination of Tatianna Schlossberg’s grandfather. He was America’s first Catholic president, a descendent of the nation’s most famous family of Irish immigrants. But Schlossberg, of course, is not an Irish name, and all four of Tatianna’s paternal great-grandparents were Orthodox Jews, born near the Vorskla River in Central Ukraine. They came to this country by way of Ellis Island.

This is the America I want to reclaim, the land where Kennedys marry Schlossbergs, and Orthodox Jews and Irish Catholics settle down to build a life together, one in which diversity, though often difficult, can open us to new customs, new cultures, and new ideas. One in which our language can once again teach us how to laugh and sing together and how to love each other. Reclaiming our language can be one step in reclaiming our country.

This is the message I take from the short life and tragic death of Tatianna Schlossberg.