Tommy, a second-year student at Harvard Law School at the time of his passing, was a passionate activist for animal and human rights. “He would say, ‘Excuse me, it’s hard to be a human.'” “He would take Benadryl and he would pet them very gently on the top of their heads, ‘You’re such a fine sentient being.” … He took very seriously - feelings.” “He was allergic to dogs and cats,” Raskin told NPR when he was asked about Tommy’s relationship with the family’s two dogs. Raskin talked about how deeply Tommy felt things, and how important the emotions and experiences of everyone and everything around him was. “But every day we’re able to disentangle them more so that we can experience the love more purely and the pain more purely, and it doesn’t hurt to love him.”Īt the same time, Raskin continued to laud his son for the person he was - that what made him extraordinary was not just his brilliance but his kind compassionate heart. “My wife captured it perfectly: She said that there are so much pain and so much love, and it’s all mixed together,” he added. And people tell us it’s normal, it’s natural - but ultimately it’s unresolvable and inscrutable.” “It’s just cognitive quicksand,” he told the Atlantic. “And it’s just a painful process, ultimately futile.” Notably, he laid bare the struggles of parents and loved ones who are left behind after a death by suicide: “You get drawn into a thousand questions about, ‘Well, maybe we should have done this, maybe we should have said that,'” he told the New York Times. In every interview, Raskin has shared information to break the misconceptions and the taboo around discussions of suicide and depression. Yet through it all, Raskin has given moving interviews about Tommy, whom he and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former deputy secretary of the Treasury, paid a heartbreaking tribute to in an important, stigma-breaking eulogy. I am in awe of Jamie Raskin’s grace at this moment. 12, Raskin was appointed one of the impeachment managers.
He started drafting articles of impeachment against the president, articles that charge him with “incitement of insurrection” for his involvement in spurring on last Wednesday’s deadly violence. “They were locked inside and barricaded the door,” Raskin recalled in an interview with the Atlantic, “and Tabitha and Hank were hiding under the desk as this mob pounded on the doors.” He felt regret for bringing them there, only to experience more trauma.ĭespite that harrowing experience, Raskin - a law scholar, lawyer, and the author of two books on Supreme Court cases - immediately started to spearhead the to impeach President Trump, again, alongside a group of colleagues. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), whose son passed away last week, receives a standing ovation from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Soon enough, the family found itself rushing for safety, Raskin from the House floor, and Tabitha and Hank from the second-floor gallery. Mere moments before the violence in the Capitol, Raskin got a standing ovation from his colleagues, as he thanked them for their support during his family’s time of mourning. Instead, the family found itself in the midst of a riot. He brought his daughter, Tabitha, and his son-in-law, Hank (who is married to his eldest daughter, Hannah), to the Capitol with him, hoping to provide a distraction from grief, as well as an opportunity to observe, first hand, a historic election. On Wednesday, he went back to work - specifically, to vote to certify the election.
Last Tuesday, Raskin and his family said goodbye to Tommy with a simple Jewish burial. In the days that followed, as he was still wearing a torn black ribbon pinned to his lapel, as many mourning Jews do, life remained unrelenting for the Jewish congressman. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) lost his son, Thomas (Tommy) Bloom Raskin, to depression.