"All my life there has been the three of us: Mummy, Caroline and I," John Kennedy jnr said in his toast to his big sister at her wedding to Edwin Schlossberg in 1986.
After the long, hopeful vigil in Hyannisport and Martha's Vineyard over the weekend, attention turned to New York state yesterday, where Ms Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg waited in Bridgehampton with her husband, three children and friends, away from the mayhem of Hyannisport.
In New York City flowers, prayers, poems, candles and sympathy cards piled high outside John and Carolyn Kennedy's apartment building in TriBeCa, recalling the public expressions of grief for Princess Diana almost two years ago.
The Bessette family tried to shield themselves from photographers in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, not far from the enormous traditional home John and Carolyn were buildingin Canaan. The three Bessette sisters were close: Lauren's surviving twin, Lisa Ann, also lives at Canaan.
Tributes were placed outside the Manhattan offices of George, where colleagues wondered if the magazine could survive without its charismatic editor-in-chief. Former workmates of Carolyn Bessette at Calvin Klein expressed their dismay.
Carolyn met JFK jnr while acting as Calvin Klein's "celebrity representative" arranging purchases for the famous who didn't want to shop in public view. In offices everywhere, Americans went on line to read premature obituaries, and the major networks ran continuous repetitive broadcasts, adding very little new information as the search continued.
The question remains: who will bear the grim task of dealing with the grief of both the families and the public, Sen Edward Kennedy, as patriarch, or Mr John Kennedy jnr's closest relative, mentor and friend, Caroline?
Ms Kennedy Schlossberg (41), a lawyer, writer and mother of three children aged 12, nine and five, has successfully shunned publicity, even co-writing a book called The Right to Privacy with her college friend, Ms Ellen Alderman, a constitutional scholar.
In a rare public statement, Ms Kennedy Schlossberg argued against the impeachment of President Clinton last year on the basis of his right to privacy in his personal life.
She did not condone his behaviour - and made veiled references to her father's own propensities - but said that those in public service should be judged by their life's work "and not just by the worst they have done".
In an article for Time magazine which echoed her speech at a public meeting with Toni Morrison, her friend Gloria Steinem and others, she said: "The nation pays a price every time the President does not finish his term. I know this from first hand."
She concluded this very eloquent and textured series of remarks with the hope that "public service will still be an honourable calling".
It is sad to contemplate her being pressed into public service herself now, given how determinedly private and centred her life has been.
She is devoted to her young children, whom she often walks to school in New York, and to her richly-talented husband, who is described as a Buckminster Fuller type who works in media arts, museum design and architectural history. The only public appearances she does agree to are those associated with her parents' name; or for charitable causes she is committed to. She declined to serve as chairwoman of the Democratic Convention in 1992, and was carefully shielded by her brother from having to make any statements after her mother's death.
But without her young brother and sister-in-law, she will perhaps have no choice but to take possession of this terrible grief publicly as well as privately.
She may be heartened by the tribute paid to her brother by his good friend, Mr Douglas Brinkley, in the New York Times: "It would be disingenuous to pretend that John was a supreme intellectual force; he wasn't. But he was more than a symbol of courtly grace and nonchalant glamour. He used his celebrity stature to make a positive contribution to politics."