Fears of existential ramblings are groundless, by the way, so not to worry.
I'll connect the dots shortly.
(CNN) -- A New York medical examiner will begin an autopsy Thursday on Mary Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was found dead at her Westchester County home. She was 52.
Her death is the latest for a family that has seen its share of tragedy.
"We know from a history of this family, it's very hard being a Kennedy, either being a blood Kennedy or being married to one," Laurence Leamer, a Kennedy biographer, said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront." "The overwhelming celebrity, the attention, the obligations, the expectations that you're supposed to do something with your life. It's very, very hard."
In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. was assassinated in California while making a run for the White House. His death came more than four years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, also died at the hands of an assassin.
More than three decades later in 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, died when a plane he was piloting crashed in the waters off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. David Kennedy died of a drug overdose and Michael Kennedy was killed in a skiing accident.
We'll be right back to "The Kennedy Curse" in a moment.
First, a little personal reflection.
I've always felt an odd kind of kinship with the Kennedy family. I'm not really sure why. My own family is to the Kennedys what the Kardashians are to, say, the Billy Graham family.
In other words, not even close.
Perhaps my connection is generational.
I really don't remember a lot about childhood, but I do vividly remember January 1961, as a boy of nine, being pretty excited by my teacher's carting in of a black and white TV so that the whole class could watch the inauguration of a President of the United States.
Pretty ho-hum by today's kid's criteria, I'm sure, but pretty heady stuff for a nine year old in 1961.
I don't remember a whole lot about junior high school gawkiness, but I vivdly remember coming back from lunch, November 1963, walking back into the sixth grade classroom and hearing, in a far out of the normal routine occurence, the crackle and pop of bad AM radio reception playing out on the school address system, odd and unsettling words sputtering out amidst the crackle and pop, words like "rifle fire" and "motorcade" and "assassination attempt".
I don't remember a whole lot about high school awkwardness, but I vividly remember sitting in my bedroom, June 1968, the sounds of Richard Harris singing "MacArthur Park" from my small turntable in the background (I just happened to be a fan of Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb songs at the time), reading and re-reading the newspaper headlines that were, as those kind of headlines always were, much bigger and bolder and blacker...headlines like "KENNEDY DEAD".....and "RFK KILLED BY ASSASSIN'S BULLETS".
From there the time line of my life has always seemed to be on a parallel with some eventual, seemingly inevitable, new tragedy attached to the name Kennedy.
Chappaquidick. Drug overdose. Skiing accident.
Plane crash in the waters off Martha's Vineyard.
Today, Bobby's son's estranged wife.
The seeming tradition of tragedy continuing.
Although, a reasonable case could be made that the threads of that fabric are starting to wear a little thin.
It's one thing when the son of an assassinated President and his wife and her sister do a John Denver into the Atlantic Ocean.
It's another when the estranged wife of the son of the assassinated brother of that assassinated President apparently finds the rocky dead end of the treacherous road of substance abuse and addiction.
Which brings us back to "The Kennedy Curse."
For over 70 years, the stuff that media sales department dreams are made of.
(For the untrained, I'm dating the beginning of the "curse" here back to the early 1940's when Joe Kennedy, Jr. was blown up during World War II).
And for, at least, the last fifty years or so, a loss of life in what is oft seen as near Greek tragedy proportions.
The thing is....this once upon a time 1961 nine year old has lived to be sixty and a little bit.
And doesn't see it so much, anymore, as being about a loss of life in what is oft seen as near Greek tragedy proportions.
It's really more about yellow Volkswagens.
You probably haven't given yellow Volkswagens much thought lately.
Unless you own one.
If not, again, you probably haven't given them much thought.
Here's the thing, though.
Chances are that, having read this piece, you're going to see one in the next day or two.
Because, by mentioning them, I have raised your awareness.
Every family has tragedies.
And large families, by nature of their largeness, often have more.
Every family has members who die of gunshots and drug overdoses, who drown, crash in planes and, yes, even ski into trees and break their necks.
Paging Sonny Bono.
And while it is true and fair to say that most of those family members don't have their assorted demises played out on an international stage, they demise just as much, and just as often, regardless.
Somewhere along the timeline, some very savvy media people, probably even unwittingly, drew a line from a fallen war hero to a murdered President to a murdered Senator...and a mystique was born.
A mystique that very quickly morphed, for public consumption, into a curse.
Primarily because mystiques might be sexy, but a good curse will draw a big crowd every time.
And all that's really happened is that, sadly, once again, a member of a family has died in a tragic way.
As will a lot of members of a lot of families today.
Mary Kennedy's death isn't the latest example of the "Kennedy Curse".
We've simply been trained to hear the words "Kennedy death" and, in instant Pavlovian fashion, think "curse".
If it had been Mary Jones who died, you probably wouldn't be aware of it.
And being made aware of it is all it takes to trigger the response.
Remember that as the you listen to the "Kennedy Curse" blather over the next couple of days.
And when you see that yellow Volkswagen drive by.
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