For Mrs. Edwards

Long after we've finished dissecting the tragic life of Elizabeth Edwards, I will remember her for this: her honesty and courage in living with cancer. Like Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve before her, she brought into light the reality of living with advanced, incurable disease.

She didn't try to tie a pink ribbon around her situation, either. She knew this disease would take her life, and she told us so. She knew that her days were numbered, and she reminded us that ours are, too. She knew that cancer wasn't something that she could "beat," but she continued living her life undaunted by death's shadow.

Many people's hearts went out to Elizabeth Edwards over the course of her life--for her son's death, for her cancer diagnosis, and for her husband's infidelity. Unlike many in our ruling political class, she seemed real and human and as vulnerable as the rest of us.

Hers was a troubled journey, though perhaps in truth, her story was ours as well--just played out on a larger, more public landscape. For who among us doesn't experience pain, loss, and betrayal somewhere along the way?

Whatever contradictions may have existed in her personal and public life don't matter in the end. What we have left is the public face that she showed us. And it was a face that accepted life's terms--the hardest terms of all--without flinching.

I'm sorry that Elizabeth Edwards has died. I wish her children well and hope that they are buoyed in the years ahead by the uncommon strength of their mother.