Death
On January 27, 1957, Paulina died of an overdose of sleeping pills. Vice President Richard Nixon was a pallbearer at her funeral. Upon Paulina's death, Alice's cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt sent a letter of condolence to Alice and the two women reconciled.
There had been what appeared to be previous suicide attempts. And despite caring about her daughter, and being a pious Catholic, the gravity of the depression that Paulina experienced was its own driver. Her friends saw Paulina as suffering "from a kind of psychic exhaustion": as one of her friends explained, ”She had gone through the motions of living, and I think it was not a pleasurable process for her."
Upon her daughter's death, Alice Roosevelt Longworth sought to raise Joanna. While things were not smooth at first (Joanna had seen how her mother would become stilted around Alice so she had not wanted to live with her initially), eventually Joanna did live with Alice and the two ended up becoming very close.
Paulina Longworth Sturm is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington.
Read more about this topic: Paulina Longworth
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“For in the word death
There is nothing to grasp; nothing to catch or claim;
Nothing to adapt the skill of the heart to, skill
In surviving, for death it cannot survive,
Only resign the irrecoverable keys.
The wave falters and drowns. The coulter of joy
Breaks. The harrow of death
Depends. And there are thrown up waves.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“As for death one gets used to it, even if it’s only other people’s death you get used to.”
—Enid Bagnold (1889–1981)
“Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,
Ease me with death by bidding me got too.
Oh, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late to kill me so,
Being double dead: going, and bidding go.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)