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The vice president's mom, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, died today at 92.
Here's how her son Joe described her a few years ago.
Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden is the soul, spirit, and essence of what it means to be an Irish American.
She is spiritual. She is romantic. She honors tradition, and understands the thickest of all substances is blood, and the greatest of all virtues is love.
She has taught her children, all her children in my neighborhood who flocked to her hearth, that you are
defined by your sense of honor and you are redeemed by your loyalty.
She is quintessentially Irish -- a combination of pragmatism and optimism.
She also understands as my friend Pat Moynihan once said, there is no "point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually."
But she is more. She measures success in how quickly you get up after you have been knocked down.
She believes bravery lives in every heart, and her expectation is that it will be summoned. Failure at some point in everyone's life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.
As long as you are alive you have an obligation to strive. And you are not dead until you've seen God's face.
Slán agus beannacht leat, Mrs. Biden.
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