I know the place where they got lost on the water. Shady Side was in my mind's eye through the mother and son's celebration of life gathering, with 3,000 in the Zoom ether. The Kennedy family pioneered a new form of mourning amid the pandemic.

First, from South Africa came a song with a promise, "We're together in spirit." For this we prayed.

The 21st-century congregation witnessed remembrances, elegies, poetry and music from various living rooms. "Lord of the Dance" summoned the Irish soul.

Starkly personal, the form meant nobody got lost in the crowd.

Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean, a vibrant blue-eyed 40-year-old, and her boy hopped into a canoe to chase a ball. Something Kennedys do. But on that April afternoon, the wind and waves swept them into the wide Chesapeake Bay between Maryland and Virginia shores. Then they were gone.

It had all the makings of a Greek tragedy. Maeve was a global health expert, what America needs right now. In her 20s, she volunteered for the Peace Corps.

That's the Peace Corps her great-uncle President John F. Kennedy founded, which President Donald Trump just "fired." For her work, she traveled the world, to Haiti and Bangladesh. But it was outside her mother's house that one of four sisters vanished. Irrepressible like Jo in "Little Women."

Gideon was 8. He once sped down an Olympic ski slope. He was Robert F. Kennedy's great-grandson — or "Grandpa Bobby."

To hear tell, Gideon inherited a compass of social justice in play among tearstained friends and cousins. They swore they'd always love him, never forget him. The children's camera montage was charming. "Ball" was Gideon's first word.

Nobody needed to say how Bobby Kennedy's light shone in the tumult of the late '60s. He wept when he witnessed Mississippi poverty. He calmed a crowd in Indiana the cruel night of Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder in April 1968, giving the speech of his life — quoting Aeschylus, the Greek tragedian.

In a knell that broke the country's heart — again — the senator was slain that June, running for president. In 1963, President Kennedy's assassination froze the nation in grief.

Six decades ago, in 1960, the torch passed to John F. Kennedy.

His younger brother Bobby and Ethel Kennedy had 11 children. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the oldest, is Maeve's mother. We met when she was Maryland's lieutenant governor and I was a Baltimore Sun reporter.

Heartbroken for her, I sent a sympathy note. Kathleen welcomed guests with grace and made us feel at home, so to speak. I was touched to be virtually there.

We listened to a W.B. Yeats poem reading: "Old Age of Queen Maeve," a woman with "lucky eyes and high heart ... beautiful and fierce."

That became clear in images smiling on the sea, in the snow, doing things Kennedys do. Maeve loved green apples and listened to NPR at dawn. This loss had more female characters than iconic Kennedy tales. A sister choked as she spoke of their "secret language ... I can't find without my sister."

The program was conducted by Mark Bailey, near his wife Rory Kennedy. She's the youngest of 11, an image of her father. Their Nantucket wedding in 1999 was John F. Kennedy Jr.'s destination with his wife, Carolyn, and her sister. They never reached the island. The plane he flew was lost over the water.

Somber Edward Kennedy Jr. sat with his family, looking like his late father. Once when we met at a New York gala, he told me he lost his leg as a child. "I remember that," I said, the same age.

If we had tears for all the family gave and lost — without counting the cost — they were shed that day before Easter. In my heart was anguish over how far America fell in a lifetime.

Maeve's husband, David, bravely gave his tribute, holding his toddler son. The Kaddish prayer for the dead was recited. Melissa Etheridge sang "Spirit in the Sky" live from her studio. All were invited to light a candle in memory of Maeve and Gideon.

"We made friends who became family," Mark said. "We'll be together still when we close these laptops."

True that was.

Jamie Stiehm can be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To read her weekly column and find out more about Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

Photo credit: shell_ghostcage at Pixabay