After C.S. Lewis -- author of the "The Chronicles of Narnia," literary scholar and world-renowned Christian apologist -- died at home near Oxford University, a rival academic informed his own class of Lewis' passing and commented:

"They said in The Times that we will miss him. We will not. We will not."

Such a public lack of grace at another human being's death is rare. Most of us focus on the recently departed's endearing qualities and good works, and gloss over ignoble deeds and the differences that divide us. But it's also true that the more public the figure, the more scrutiny -- carefully -- bestowed.

And so it has been with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whose death last week marked the end of a generation of America's most storied political family. Mr. Kennedy was the only one of the four brothers to reach old age. Death's heavy hand shaped his entire life.

Eldest brother Joseph Kennedy Jr. had died in the skies over England during a World War II bombing mission while young Teddy was at boarding school.

C.S. Lewis' passing, as well as his fellow countryman Aldous Huxley's, on Nov. 22, 1963, was understandably overlooked in the wave of grief that swept over this nation as, that same day, an assassin's bullet felled President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

Five years after JFK's assassination, the third Kennedy brother, Robert, was slain in California while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And that left Teddy. Death shaped his life, and his life has had a profound impact, good and bad, on the life of the nation.

He showed us how to triumph over tragedy, we've been told repeatedly. But, like all of us, he was both fate's agent and victim. How much tragedy was of his own making? How much grew from the double-edged sword -- the privilege and lack of accountability -- that accompanied his family's place in society?

There was a fourth death, of course, that shaped his life -- that of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young campaign worker who died in his car in July 1969. Every lengthy media memorial of recent days has included this episode, however briefly, since it cost him a presidency that would otherwise most likely have been his.

Excessive use of alcohol was a factor in Ms. Kopechne's death, and it continued to be a destructive factor in Mr. Kennedy's life for years thereafter -- straight through the time in which he single-handedly turned the name "Bork" into a verb.

I have no stone to throw here; none of us does. As we survey our own wreckage and acquire some amount of self-knowledge, we all look back and ask, "How would my life be different if I'd understood then what I do now? How would my children's lives be different if I hadn't messed up this or failed at that?"

Not many of us, however, have the opportunity or need to ask, "How would the nation be different if I had made a different choice?" Mr. Kennedy had that responsibility. His personal failings are his business; his public failings are ours.

Within hours of President Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, Mr. Kennedy made this statement: "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids. ..." And so on.

You'd have to go all the way back to the McCarthy hearings to find a similarly slanderous, evil, intellectually dishonest episode in American politics. It is not an exaggeration to say that Mr. Kennedy's attack radically changed the landscape of American politics.

Last week's tributes emphasized the deep and genuine friendships Mr. Kennedy later built with Republican colleagues. The conservative Orrin Hatch, in particular, was seen insisting that, despite what some might expect, he counted Mr. Kennedy a close friend.

What was not said is that our expectation to the contrary was shaped by a rancorous climate Mr. Kennedy did so much to create. Twenty years later, we are still decrying Washington's bitter partisanship and the politics of personal destruction.

I can join people of every political persuasion in rejoicing that Mr. Kennedy found sobriety, happiness and the respect of his peers. I admire his lifelong devotion to his family and to the plight of the poor, the disenfranchised and the dispossessed.

Some wish he'd lived long enough to complete the nationalization of health care. I wish he'd used his growing stature to sweeten and heal -- through apology and example -- our national discourse.

But few lives are really finished when they end. Ted Kennedy's dramatic life will continue to be both cautionary tale and personal inspiration. Rest in peace.