Try to read this New York Times story without tearing up:
LONDON — Ivan Cameron was just 6, a boy with a lovely smile who was born with cerebral palsy and a severe form of epilepsy that deprived him of the ability to walk, talk or feed himself, and caused him to spend much of his time in the hospital, sometimes with his parents sleeping on the floor beside him.
Early Wednesday, when Ivan died, the news resonated deeply in Britain. The BBC made his death the lead item on its main news bulletins for much of the day, ahead of the world financial crisis. For the first time in 15 years, the House of Commons canceled prime minister’s questions, the 30 minutes of pugilistic politics that is Parliament’s main weekly attraction, and devoted the time instead to tributes to Ivan by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other party leaders.
What made Ivan headline news at his death, and a topic of widespread public sympathy while he was alive, was that he was the oldest child of David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party and the man heavily favored by opinion polls to be Britain’s prime minister after an election that must be held by June 2010.
But there was something more, and that was what the British public learned about Mr. Cameron and his wife, Samantha, through the prism of Ivan’s life.
