When my 10-year-old daughter asked why I was crying, I couldn’t do much else but put my face in my hands — a weak attempt to hide my hurt from a kid who has already seen her parents at their most stressed and bereft these past few months. I left it to her father to explain who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, why she was so important to women, and why the loss was so great that her usually-verbose mother couldn’t seem to get a word out without sobbing.
In the coming days we’ll read about Justice Ginsburg’s remarkable life, how she forever changed the United States and how its legal system treats women, and what her death means for a country less than two months away from its presidential election.