Robert F. Kennedy Jr today revealed the moving details of his last conversation with his estranged wife Mary Richardson Kennedy as he paid tribute to her at her funeral.
Earlier Mary's sister-in-law Kerry Kennedy spoke about her best friend, and said Mary was an 'angel' who had been taken to Heaven by her own 'forces of evil'.
Choking with emotion, Mary’s sister-in-law and lifelong friend said that the mother-of-four 'loved her children more than anything else' - but had been unable to stop her inner demons from claiming her.
A galaxy of stars came out to remember Mary, who had battled depression for years and hanged herself on Wednesday in her barn in Bedford, New York at the age of 52.
Glenn Close sang at the funeral at St Patrick's Church in Bedford, New York, comedian Larry David gave a speech in remembrance and Maria Shriver was among the guests paying their respects.
Three of Mary Kennedy's four children, who are aged between 11 and 19, also gave readings from scriptures.
The funeral was held in the church where her children received their first communion, the New York Daily News reported.
The readings included a liturgy from the Book of Job from Conor Kennedy, her eldest, which included the line: 'The souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them...they are in peace'.
However, the rancour between Mary’s family and that of her estranged husband continued to the very last, when they all but boycotted the service.
The only person from her side of the family seen at the service was one of her sisters - but she did not even speak in a service that was all but a 'Kennedy only' affair.
Guests, who were in sombre black suits and appropriate black dresses, began arriving at 8am for the 10am service.
Mary’s children and Bobby Kennedy, 58, arrived shortly after 10am in a black Lincoln whilst her mother-in-law Ethel Kennedy, 84, was in a black SUV behind them.
After being hugged by friends and relatives her three eldest children Kyra, Aiden and Conor helped carry the oak-coloured casket at waist level into the church.
They were assisted by 10 other pallbearers including the housekeeper who found Mrs Kennedy’s body and one of her sisters.
Robert F Kennedy Jr walked ahead of the casket, which did not have any flowers on it, and Mary 's youngest son William, who looked confused and distraught, was lead inside by the hand by a relative.
Caroline Kennedy was also among the mourners, Chevy Chase arrived wearing a dark shirt and jeans, veteran actor Edward James Olmos came too as did John McEnroe.
Other guests included Susan Sarandon, Dan Ackroyd and wife Donna, hotelier Andre Balazs in a dark suit and Joe Kennedy wearing a navy suit ad light blue tie.
In her statement made before the service began Kerry said she was speaking on behalf of the whole family to express their sense of loss.
Dressed in a black dress, tall black shoes and with a silver pendant around her neck she struggled to contain her emotion.
She said: 'I just want to thank everybody for all their prayers, and the support of our family.
'Mary was my very very best friend and the best friend anyone could imagine having.
'She was brilliant and she was beautiful and she cared so very, very deeply about everybody around her. She had friends in every corner of the globe. Really deep rich friendships.
'She just lived her life to the fullest. She did everything she could for her friends and she loved her children more than anything else.
'Conor, her eldest, was her prince. Kyra her little girl, looked exactly like Mary.
'On Tuesday she was talking about where Kyra going to school and what she was going to do this summer and she just loved her children more than anything.
'Mary suffered from depression and it's a disease that so many, many, many Americans suffer from,' she added, fighting back the tears.
'I just think about the story of Michael, the Archangel, who had to battle the forces of evil, had to battle Satan who was trying to enter paradise. And that's what Mary did her whole life. She was battling, battling those demons and keeping them out of the paradise that was Mary.
'I just think that she was really an angel who was brought to us, to live with us here on Earth and I think that God just brought her back up to Heaven and said you don't have to fight for me anymore.
'You can be back where you're supposed to be. With my brothers and her father and her mother and the people who she so loved and we'll miss her.'
The service got underway with a rendition of Amazing Grace sung by - among others - Ms Close, who was wearing a black dress when she arrived.
Conor Kennedy gave his reading then Kyra Kennedy recited Psalm 42 before William Kennedy, who is just 11 years old, also gave a reading from Letter of Paul to Romans.
Family members and Mrs Ackroyd offered prayers and gifts before a rendition of the hymn 'How great thou art' and the Prayer of St Francis.
To wrap things up Larry David gave a remembrance, as did Kerry Kennedy then Bobby Kennedy delivered the final eulogy which mourners described as 'touching' and 'deeply moving'.
According to the New York Post, Mr David fought back tears as he spoke.
He told the audience: 'She was not haunted by darkness. She was the most selfless person I ever met.'
As guests filed out into the brilliant sunshine the church bell tolled across the village.
This time all four of Mary Kennedy's children helped carry her coffin out, as did Bobby Kennedy who brought up the rear.
For a powerful and poignant moment all five stood together wiping away tears in their eyes with their arms around each other as they looked at the coffin sitting in the back of the hearse - as if saying goodbye.
The family then spent half an hour greeting and thanking guests before boarding a coach believed to be taking them to Massachusetts where the body would be buried.
The Rev George Thompson, the pastor of St Patrick's Church said: 'It was a very traditional Mass service with traditional music. They wanted to make sure people knew what they were singing and people did sing along.
'There were around 400 people in the church and we had to put out extra seats.
'There were light hearted moments and lots of stories told about Mary, but there were some sombre moments too.'
Mary Kennedy, neé Richardson, was Bobby Kennedy's second wife. The couple married in April 1994. She had known the Kennedys for years, through her friendship with Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s sister, Kerry, whom she met at boarding school.
She had been Kerry’s maid of honour at her wedding in 1990.
She and Bobby, the son of assassinated U.S. senator and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, separated 16 years later, and whilst he filed for divorce in 2010 it never went through.
The case was pending when she died.
Shortly after the split, her internal struggles became public when she was arrested twice on charges of driving while intoxicated.
Things appear to have got worse in recent years and friends and other documents revealed she was drowning in credit card debt, feared she would lose both her home and her children and was getting destroyed by her husband in the divorce court.
Bobby Kennedy filed multiple restraining orders against his estranged wife in recent months and tried to get full custody of the children by claiming she was an unfit mother.
At the same time he began dating actress Cheryl Hines, who stars with David in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
A close friend told the New York Post: 'He was kicking her while she’s down, all alone in this house that she built. In the end, everything was just too much.'
This lead to ill feeling between the Richardsons and the Kennedys and one of her brothers, Thomas, filed a legal motion in White Plains on Thursday to try take control of the funeral arrangements and take her body back, but a judge ruled against him.
The Richardsons are said to be planning their own private wake on Monday in Manhattan.
Asked if he had met anyone from Mary Kennedy's family, Rev Thompson said that if there were they had not introduced themselves to him
He said: 'I don't recall speaking to anybody from her family, though I don't know them as well as the Kennedys'.
Before the funeral, Bobby Kennedy spoke for the first time about his estranged wife's long and difficult battle with depression, saying he 'does not know how she made it through the day'.
Speaking from the estate he shared with his wife for 16 years yesterday, he told the New York Times: 'A lot of times I don’t know how she made it through the day. She was in a lot of agony for a lot of her life.'
Kerry said Mary - a lifelong friend - had been sober for five months, but was still battling depression.
'She fought with every ounce of her mission to overcome that horrible disease,' she told The New York Times. 'It was not something that she asked for, it was something that she was dealt.
'You know, you sometimes hear things like "I’ve lost my right arm?" I feel like I’ve lost half my body, half my soul.'
Since Mary's death reports have exposed the full extent of the stress she was under when she hanged herself in an out building at her $2million mansion in Bedford.
She and Bobby Kennedy were scheduled to meet in court again on August 10 and a four-day trial was planned for September - which could have resulted in her losing custody of her children.
A close friend of Mary said: 'She faced losing her kids, and his relationship with Cheryl Hines was humiliating.
'At an event last month, he walked the red carpet with Cheryl as a couple and took the kids.
'She loved him. Her family and her home [were] her heart and soul. Even after they separated, she was pretending everything was fine. She’d still call him her husband. It was bizarre and sad.'
Mary Kennedy was also said to be drowning in debt. American Express filed a civil suit against her in Westchester on April 16 and she did not know how she was going to source the money.
Friends said Bobby Kennedy was trying to cut the amount of child support he was giving her and she had no access to the Kennedy trust fund.
'Mary was terrified that Robert was going to take the kids from her,' a source told RadarOnline. 'She was convinced he was building a case against her as an unfit mother and that he would be pursuing full custody.'
Mrs Kennedy's suicide was the latest in a succession of tragedies to strike the glittering and powerful Kennedy clan, known as the 'curse of Camelot'.
Her official cause of death was asphyxiation due to hanging, according to an autopsy report.
Westchester County Medical Examiner's Office spokeswoman Donna Greene said that results of toxicology tests would not be ready for several months.
'She was used up and tossed away by Bobby. That was awful. He was going for full custody of the kids, which broke her heart.'
Mrs Kennedy had an on-going battle with drugs and alcohol and on several occasions tried to seek help.
She fell deep into despair, threatening suicide so often that the family staged an intervention, another friend said. She even tried AA meetings, but often relapsed, friends and family said.
'There were times when she had to be taken to the hospital when she would be acting irrationally and threatening to hurt herself,' a source told the Post.
As news of her death spread, friends spoke of her inner torment following her very public divorce from her husband. A close family friend told the New York Post: 'She was deeply troubled, abusing alcohol and prescription meds. She had cause.
'She was used up and tossed away by Bobby. That was awful. He was going for full custody of the kids, which broke her heart. She also had been part of the Kennedy family for 30 years. And now she was being cast aside by them.'
In February 2010, Mrs Kennedy had gone into rehab, friends told the New York Daily News. One neighbour said: 'She always seems lost these days, whenever she came into the village. Lost and alone and sort of out of it.'
There were indications her troubles started even earlier.
In 2007, Robert F. Kennedy Jr drove his wife to a hospital for treatment, but she resisted and ran from the car, according to the Journal News, which cited Mount Kisco police records.
'I remember she was acting kind of out of it, kind of crazy,' a witness, Rae Kesten, told The Journal News in 2007. 'She was running into the street and flailing her arms around. He was trying to restrain her. I didn't know if they were fighting or not, but I was concerned.'
Mary was a crusader for environmental issues and food allergy research, and was known among friends and family as a devoted mother.
With one of her children battling severe allergies, she co-founded the Food Allergy Initiative, billed as the world's largest private source of funding for food allergy research, and appeared with her family at its annual ball at Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146804/Mary-Kennedy-death-Emotional-scenes-funeral-mourners-lay-rest.html#ixzz1vOHFYRxb
He told mourners that he had spoken to her the day before she was found hanged at her home, and that she told him: 'You know me better than anyone in the world.'
He continued: 'She said, "I was such a good girl." I said, "I know you are - and you still are."'
Later on Saturday, Mary was buried at a cemetery in Centerville, Massachusetts, several miles away from the Kennedy seaside compound in Hyannisport.
Grief: Robert Kennedy Jr wiped away tears as he remembered wife Mary, right, at her funeral on Saturday
Resting place: Family members carry Mrs Kennedy's coffin to her grave in St Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville, Massachusetts
Prayer: Mr Kennedy and his children kneel to remember Mary at the cemetery on Saturday afternoon
Consolation: The family walks away from Mary's casket as the ceremony comes to a close
Choking with emotion, Mary’s sister-in-law and lifelong friend said that the mother-of-four 'loved her children more than anything else' - but had been unable to stop her inner demons from claiming her.
A galaxy of stars came out to remember Mary, who had battled depression for years and hanged herself on Wednesday in her barn in Bedford, New York at the age of 52.
Glenn Close sang at the funeral at St Patrick's Church in Bedford, New York, comedian Larry David gave a speech in remembrance and Maria Shriver was among the guests paying their respects.
Three of Mary Kennedy's four children, who are aged between 11 and 19, also gave readings from scriptures.
The funeral was held in the church where her children received their first communion, the New York Daily News reported.
The readings included a liturgy from the Book of Job from Conor Kennedy, her eldest, which included the line: 'The souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them...they are in peace'.
However, the rancour between Mary’s family and that of her estranged husband continued to the very last, when they all but boycotted the service.
One less: RFK Jr and his four children gathered outside the church after the funeral service
Comforting hand: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., second right, gathers with his children after carrying the casket of his estranged wife
Condolences: Actress Susan Sarandon, second from left, reaches out to hug a member of the Kennedy family after the funeral
Guests, who were in sombre black suits and appropriate black dresses, began arriving at 8am for the 10am service.
Mary’s children and Bobby Kennedy, 58, arrived shortly after 10am in a black Lincoln whilst her mother-in-law Ethel Kennedy, 84, was in a black SUV behind them.
After being hugged by friends and relatives her three eldest children Kyra, Aiden and Conor helped carry the oak-coloured casket at waist level into the church.
They were assisted by 10 other pallbearers including the housekeeper who found Mrs Kennedy’s body and one of her sisters.
Robert F Kennedy Jr walked ahead of the casket, which did not have any flowers on it, and Mary 's youngest son William, who looked confused and distraught, was lead inside by the hand by a relative.
Caroline Kennedy was also among the mourners, Chevy Chase arrived wearing a dark shirt and jeans, veteran actor Edward James Olmos came too as did John McEnroe.
Other guests included Susan Sarandon, Dan Ackroyd and wife Donna, hotelier Andre Balazs in a dark suit and Joe Kennedy wearing a navy suit ad light blue tie.
Sad procession: Mourners filed out of the church after the service amid bright sunlight
Duty: Pallbearers carried the oak casket carrying the body of Mary Kennedy into the church
Overcome: One attendee covers her face with her hands as the casket is being moved into the small church
Mode of transit: The hearse carrying Mary was followed by a black Town Car, where RFK rode to the church, and a black Cadillac, where Ethel Kennedy, Ted Kennedy's widow, rode
Dressed in a black dress, tall black shoes and with a silver pendant around her neck she struggled to contain her emotion.
She said: 'I just want to thank everybody for all their prayers, and the support of our family.
'Mary was my very very best friend and the best friend anyone could imagine having.
'She was brilliant and she was beautiful and she cared so very, very deeply about everybody around her. She had friends in every corner of the globe. Really deep rich friendships.
'She just lived her life to the fullest. She did everything she could for her friends and she loved her children more than anything else.
'Conor, her eldest, was her prince. Kyra her little girl, looked exactly like Mary.
'On Tuesday she was talking about where Kyra going to school and what she was going to do this summer and she just loved her children more than anything.
'Mary suffered from depression and it's a disease that so many, many, many Americans suffer from,' she added, fighting back the tears.
Paying respects: Former first lady of California Maria Shriver walked the grounds wearing large sunglasses and a cross pendant
High profile: Chevy Chase, right, joined other mourners to pay his respects
Robert Kennedy Jr, joined by family members, entered the church
'I just think that she was really an angel who was brought to us, to live with us here on Earth and I think that God just brought her back up to Heaven and said you don't have to fight for me anymore.
'You can be back where you're supposed to be. With my brothers and her father and her mother and the people who she so loved and we'll miss her.'
'She lived her life to the fullest. She did everything she could for her friends and she loved her children more than anything else.'
-Kerry Kennedy
Conor Kennedy gave his reading then Kyra Kennedy recited Psalm 42 before William Kennedy, who is just 11 years old, also gave a reading from Letter of Paul to Romans.
Family members and Mrs Ackroyd offered prayers and gifts before a rendition of the hymn 'How great thou art' and the Prayer of St Francis.
To wrap things up Larry David gave a remembrance, as did Kerry Kennedy then Bobby Kennedy delivered the final eulogy which mourners described as 'touching' and 'deeply moving'.
According to the New York Post, Mr David fought back tears as he spoke.
He told the audience: 'She was not haunted by darkness. She was the most selfless person I ever met.'
Brave face: Kerry Kennedy addresses the media outside the church before the funeral began
Paying tribute: Members of the Kennedy family, including RFK Jr, centre, arrive for the funeral of Mary Richardson Kennedy, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Serene setting: The funeral is being held at St. Patrick's Church in Bedford, New York
This time all four of Mary Kennedy's children helped carry her coffin out, as did Bobby Kennedy who brought up the rear.
For a powerful and poignant moment all five stood together wiping away tears in their eyes with their arms around each other as they looked at the coffin sitting in the back of the hearse - as if saying goodbye.
The family then spent half an hour greeting and thanking guests before boarding a coach believed to be taking them to Massachusetts where the body would be buried.
Moving eulogy: Kelly Kennedy, Mary's sister-in-law, delivered a tear-filled remembrance of her friend
'There were around 400 people in the church and we had to put out extra seats.
'There were light hearted moments and lots of stories told about Mary, but there were some sombre moments too.'
Mary Kennedy, neé Richardson, was Bobby Kennedy's second wife. The couple married in April 1994. She had known the Kennedys for years, through her friendship with Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s sister, Kerry, whom she met at boarding school.
She had been Kerry’s maid of honour at her wedding in 1990.
She and Bobby, the son of assassinated U.S. senator and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, separated 16 years later, and whilst he filed for divorce in 2010 it never went through.
The case was pending when she died.
Shortly after the split, her internal struggles became public when she was arrested twice on charges of driving while intoxicated.
Things appear to have got worse in recent years and friends and other documents revealed she was drowning in credit card debt, feared she would lose both her home and her children and was getting destroyed by her husband in the divorce court.
Bobby Kennedy filed multiple restraining orders against his estranged wife in recent months and tried to get full custody of the children by claiming she was an unfit mother.
At the same time he began dating actress Cheryl Hines, who stars with David in Curb Your Enthusiasm.
A close friend told the New York Post: 'He was kicking her while she’s down, all alone in this house that she built. In the end, everything was just too much.'
This lead to ill feeling between the Richardsons and the Kennedys and one of her brothers, Thomas, filed a legal motion in White Plains on Thursday to try take control of the funeral arrangements and take her body back, but a judge ruled against him.
Final journey: Members of Mary Kennedy's family remove her casket as her body was taken into the church
Arrival: The hearse carrying the body of Mary Kennedy arrives at St. Patrick's Church with a police escort
Asked if he had met anyone from Mary Kennedy's family, Rev Thompson said that if there were they had not introduced themselves to him
He said: 'I don't recall speaking to anybody from her family, though I don't know them as well as the Kennedys'.
Before the funeral, Bobby Kennedy spoke for the first time about his estranged wife's long and difficult battle with depression, saying he 'does not know how she made it through the day'.
Speaking from the estate he shared with his wife for 16 years yesterday, he told the New York Times: 'A lot of times I don’t know how she made it through the day. She was in a lot of agony for a lot of her life.'
Kerry said Mary - a lifelong friend - had been sober for five months, but was still battling depression.
'She fought with every ounce of her mission to overcome that horrible disease,' she told The New York Times. 'It was not something that she asked for, it was something that she was dealt.
'You know, you sometimes hear things like "I’ve lost my right arm?" I feel like I’ve lost half my body, half my soul.'
Since Mary's death reports have exposed the full extent of the stress she was under when she hanged herself in an out building at her $2million mansion in Bedford.
Resting place: It is believed Mary Kennedy will be buried next to the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver at the St Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville, Massachusetts
A close friend of Mary said: 'She faced losing her kids, and his relationship with Cheryl Hines was humiliating.
'At an event last month, he walked the red carpet with Cheryl as a couple and took the kids.
'She loved him. Her family and her home [were] her heart and soul. Even after they separated, she was pretending everything was fine. She’d still call him her husband. It was bizarre and sad.'
Mary Kennedy was also said to be drowning in debt. American Express filed a civil suit against her in Westchester on April 16 and she did not know how she was going to source the money.
Friends said Bobby Kennedy was trying to cut the amount of child support he was giving her and she had no access to the Kennedy trust fund.
'Mary was terrified that Robert was going to take the kids from her,' a source told RadarOnline. 'She was convinced he was building a case against her as an unfit mother and that he would be pursuing full custody.'
Before the split: The couple appeared together at his uncle Senator Ted Kennedy's funeral in August 2009, just months before divorcing in May 2010
Her official cause of death was asphyxiation due to hanging, according to an autopsy report.
Westchester County Medical Examiner's Office spokeswoman Donna Greene said that results of toxicology tests would not be ready for several months.
'She was used up and tossed away by Bobby. That was awful. He was going for full custody of the kids, which broke her heart.'
She fell deep into despair, threatening suicide so often that the family staged an intervention, another friend said. She even tried AA meetings, but often relapsed, friends and family said.
'There were times when she had to be taken to the hospital when she would be acting irrationally and threatening to hurt herself,' a source told the Post.
As news of her death spread, friends spoke of her inner torment following her very public divorce from her husband. A close family friend told the New York Post: 'She was deeply troubled, abusing alcohol and prescription meds. She had cause.
'She was used up and tossed away by Bobby. That was awful. He was going for full custody of the kids, which broke her heart. She also had been part of the Kennedy family for 30 years. And now she was being cast aside by them.'
In February 2010, Mrs Kennedy had gone into rehab, friends told the New York Daily News. One neighbour said: 'She always seems lost these days, whenever she came into the village. Lost and alone and sort of out of it.'
There were indications her troubles started even earlier.
In 2007, Robert F. Kennedy Jr drove his wife to a hospital for treatment, but she resisted and ran from the car, according to the Journal News, which cited Mount Kisco police records.
'I remember she was acting kind of out of it, kind of crazy,' a witness, Rae Kesten, told The Journal News in 2007. 'She was running into the street and flailing her arms around. He was trying to restrain her. I didn't know if they were fighting or not, but I was concerned.'
Mary was a crusader for environmental issues and food allergy research, and was known among friends and family as a devoted mother.
With one of her children battling severe allergies, she co-founded the Food Allergy Initiative, billed as the world's largest private source of funding for food allergy research, and appeared with her family at its annual ball at Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria.
Read more:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146804/Mary-Kennedy-death-Emotional-scenes-funeral-mourners-lay-rest.html#ixzz1vOHFYRxb
