Can you imagine having to tell your dying husband that his best friend is missing?
That’s where Carole Radziwill found herself in July 1999.
Her husband, Anthony, was in the last stages of a long battle with cancer. He was weak, worn down, fighting for every day. And then the news broke. A small plane had disappeared off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. On board were John F. Kennedy Jr., Anthony’s cousin and closest friend since boyhood, and John’s wife, Carolyn, Carole’s own best friend.
The whole world was watching the search on television.
Carole was sitting in a room with a man who didn’t have the strength to survive one more loss.
They found the wreckage days later. Three weeks after that, Anthony was gone too.
In less than a month, Carole Radziwill lost her husband and her two dearest friends. “What Remains” is the story of how she lived through it.
I could not put it down.
Forget anything you think you know about the Kennedys. This isn’t a glossy celebrity memoir. Carole came from a working-class family in a small New York town, the kind of girl who had to fight for every opportunity she got. She became a hard-nosed ABC News producer, chasing stories in war zones. She wasn’t impressed by money or famous last names.
Then she fell in love with a quiet, kind, wickedly funny man named Anthony. Only later did she fully realize what family he came from. And just after their wedding, the doctors found the cancer.
What follows is a love story that unfolds almost entirely in the shadow of illness. And it’s devastatingly honest.
Carole tells you the things most people would never admit. The bone-deep exhaustion of caregiving. The anger. The guilt of wanting, just for a moment, to run away. The small, sweet moments of joy stolen between hospital visits. The terror of watching the man you love fade a little more each week.
And through it all are John and Carolyn. Not the icons on magazine covers. The friends who showed up with takeout and bad jokes. Who sat by the bed. Who made the hardest days bearable.
By the time that plane goes down, you love them too. And it knocks the wind out of you.
Carole writes in short, clean, piercing sentences. She doesn’t beg for sympathy. She doesn’t sensationalize. She just tells the truth, and the truth is more than enough.
The title says it all. When everything is taken from you, what remains? Carole’s answer isn’t neat or easy. But it’s real. And it’s the reason this book has stayed with readers for twenty years.