Their redefining moment

Voters usually don’t have to listen very closely to hear John Edwards talk about his family.

At virtually every campaign stop from his boyhood home in Robbins, N.C., to Universal City, the North Carolina senator trumpets his humble origins as the son of a textile millworker, the first of his clan to attend college. Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, his family’s profile will be raised even higher when eldest daughter Cate, 22, is slated to introduce wife Elizabeth, who in turn will welcome Edwards to the stage to accept the nomination for the vice presidency.

The family member, however, most pivotal in launching Edwards’ spectacular rise in politics is seldom mentioned in campaign speeches and won’t be at Boston’s Fleet Center this week. He’s in a quiet cemetery in Wake County, N.C.

Wade Edwards, John and Elizabeth’s firstborn, died at 16 in a one-car accident on a North Carolina interstate eight years ago. Fierce crosswinds have been blamed for causing the teenager’s SUV to flip over several times.

Beyond these few, simple facts, the Edwards family will scarcely discuss what the 51-year-old politician acknowledges in his recent book “Four Trials” “was and is the most important fact of my life.” Additional narratives aren’t necessary to understand that their son’s death wrought profound changes for the Edwardses. After months of intense mourning, the couple determined that John, who voted infrequently until the accident, would run for political office and Elizabeth would have more children at age 48 and 50.

“They obviously went through a lot of soul-searching and great pain as they tried to come to grips with Wade’s death,” said David Kirby, law partner at the time with Edwards and a family friend for 30 years. “I think they both concluded the best way to honor their son was to try to live life to its fullest.”

For the Edwardses, the intensely personal became political. And a grief that has consumed others became instead transformative and life-altering in measured and even unplanned ways.

The family as political prop is nothing new during an election cycle. But what is truly pioneering in the age of Oprah is a national politician negotiating the tension between candor and privacy about such an overwhelming tragedy. The balancing act is extremely delicate and fraught with an almost unavoidable element of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Be open and voters may obtain a legitimate sense of character under stress and strain, but become too emotional and the tack easily can be interpreted as exploiting personal calamity for political gain, as when Vice President Al Gore, in 1996, spoke at the DNC of his sister’s death from lung cancer. Conversely, be closed and run the risk of becoming viewed as cold, callous and frozen in grief.

“If [Edwards] talked about it any more, people would think he’s going for the pity vote,” said Therese A. Rando, clinical director of the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Loss in Warwick, R.I. “I think he’s wise to say, ‘My heart is not an open well for you folks to plumb.’ Kudos to him for drawing the line.”

Others, who have tracked Edwards since his first run for political office in 1998, when he unseated the Republican Senate incumbent, see his reticence as more calculated. “I think intuitively he knows [talking about his son’s death] wouldn’t play to the jury, the voters,” said Michael C. Munger, chairman of the political science department at Duke University in Durham, N.C. “When you meet John Edwards you get the sense of someone almost outside himself evaluating how he’s coming across.”

Edwards, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has made a number of recent television appearances with his wife in which the topic of their son’s death is broached. Elizabeth, whom Edwards refers to as his “conscience,” will talk a little more freely about it, but the senator’s response to Larry King last week is typical: “We both were attached to him at the breastbone. He was such a huge part of our family.... But, you know, beyond that, I think that this is something that ought to remain with our family and private and so it’s a perfectly reasonably question for you to ask, but with your permission, I think I’ll stop there.”

Despite limited family commentary, some details have become known through friends, media accounts and Edwards’ book. John and Elizabeth were so overcome with grief immediately after their son’s death that a neighbor often helped them to bed. Daughter Cate, who was 14 at the time, became “the vital center” of the family, Edwards wrote in his book. She made dinner for her parents and slept beside them at night on a makeshift bed of two chairs.

John didn’t return to work in one of the state’s most respected law firms specializing in personal injury and medical malpractice for six months. Elizabeth gave up a career as a bankruptcy attorney and officially changed her last name to Edwards.

“Wade worshiped the ground that his father walked on; the two had a very special, close relationship,” said Kirby, who met Edwards at law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Wade’s death rocked John to his foundation.”

Less than a year before the accident, the father and son joined a small expedition to climb Africa’s highest point, 19,340-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro. Between a fear of heights, the thinning air, an inability to keep food down, the elder Edwards tired near the summit and told the others he couldn’t make it. The son rallied his weakened father with a pep talk and both eventually made it to the top.

“It took months for two of my toes to regain their feeling,” Edwards wrote in his book. “But that wasn’t what mattered. That trip to Africa with my son is worth a book in itself. It was worth everything.”

Society’s stock response about losing a child -- it’s the worst thing that can befall parents -- is borne out by research, psychologists say. Parents with children who die first are more at risk for depression, job loss, divorce and even an earlier death compared to other parents, psychologists say.

While any death can trigger immense grief, the sense of loss created by a child’s death can be more debilitating and disheartening because of the unique and intense bond between parent and child. And, as in the case of the Edwardses, the suddenness of the death can further complicate the grieving process, which in and of itself can last a lifetime, psychologists say. “They had a combination of traumatic stress plus grief,” said Rando, who has worked with bereaved parents for more than three decades. “It’s a different animal, and one can interfere with the other in moving forward.”

A child’s death can prompt dramatic shifts in personal philosophies and religious attitudes, as again seems the case with Edwards, who fully embraced his Christianity after Wade’s death. “When a child pre-deceases a parent, that’s not how the world is supposed to work,” Rando added. “It’s a massive violation of the order of the universe, and it essentially leaves people to re-create meaning in their lives.”

The Edwardses found meaning and a way to memorialize their son by establishing the nonprofit Wade Edwards Foundation, whose first project was a computer learning center for his high school. The couple endowed a chair at the University of North Carolina law school and started a creative writing contest in honor of their son. And a 106-foot-long comet-shaped sculpture that included molded handprints of his friends was built at a public school and carried an inscription culled from one of Wade’s Latin exams: “Heroes in modern times are the link between man as he is and as he could be.”

When the immense pain began to lift, the couple realized the greatest joy in their lives was children and, despite their age, decided to have more. With the help of fertility treatments, Elizabeth gave birth to Emma Claire, now 6, and two years later, John Atticus -- the latter was Wade’s Latin name. Having more children after losing one isn’t uncommon, psychologists say, but the decision can frequently draw harsh judgments.

“Parents are very sensitive about these children being viewed as replacements,” said Richard Tedeschi, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and author of “Helping Bereaved Parents.” “There is no way to replace the other child. It’s a very personal decision, and it’s hard to judge from the outside looking in.”

Despite the loss, John Edwards apparently has held on to a sense of optimism. Friends say he seems to have been born with it. But Edwards puts it differently in his book: “I have learned two great lessons -- that there will always be heartache and struggle, and that people of strong will can make a difference. One is a sad lesson; the other is inspiring. I choose to be inspired.”