Jackie Kennedy’s Emotional Final Letter to JFK Jr. Revealed in New Documentary ‘American Prince’

CNN’s new John F. Kennedy Jr. documentary unearthed a heartbreaking final letter that Jackie Kennedy wrote to her son days before her 1994 death from cancer.

Family friend Gary Ginsberg revealed in the three-episode docuseries American Prince that, while Jackie was on her deathbed, she shared encouraging words for her then 33-year-old son about his place in their family’s grand political legacy.

“I understand the pressure you’ll forever have to endure as a Kennedy even though we brought you into this world as an innocent,” Jackie wrote to John. “You, especially, have a place in history, no matter what course in life you choose.”

She poignantly concluded, “All I can ask is that you continue to make me, the Kennedy family and yourself proud.”

Jackie was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in December 1993 and immediately underwent a course of chemotherapy. This treatment was ultimately ineffective, as the cancer spread to Jackie’s spinal cord, brain and liver by March 1994. Jackie died in May 1994, only a few days after she confirmed in a press release that she was stopping all treatment.

The former first lady’s diagnosis came at the same time as her nephew Anthony Radziwill had a recurrence of testicular cancer. In American Prince, Anthony’s wife, Carole Radziwill, opened up about how Jackie and Anthony broke the news about their respective cancer diagnoses to one another in the same phone call. (Anthony died from cancer less than a month after John, his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette were killed in a plane crash near Martha’s Vineyard in July 1999.)

“I remember [Anthony] saying, ‘OK, you go first.’ Then, [Jackie] said, ‘I have bad news that I’ve been diagnosed with lymphoma,’” Carole, 61, recalled. “The end [for Jackie] came pretty quickly. I remember it was a Sunday when we all were together, and [by] Thursday, she passed away.”