Susan Saint James died of cancer at 80. She had already buried a son.

Susan Saint James, the actress best known for “Kate & Allie” and “McMillan & Wife,” died Oct. 26 from metastatic pancreatic cancer, according to a death certificate obtained by People.

She was 80. The diagnosis came months before her death, Page Six reported. Twenty-two years earlier, her youngest son, Teddy, died in a plane crash in Colorado at age 14.

The crash happened on Nov. 28, 2004, when a private charter jet carrying her husband, NBC Sports executive Dick Ebersol, and two of their sons slid off the runway during takeoff at Montrose Regional Airport. Teddy was killed. Dick and Charlie Ebersol survived, seriously injured. Charlie, then 21, pulled his father from the wreckage, according to published accounts.

Saint James was not on the plane. She was at home in Los Angeles, where she and Ebersol had raised their family since marrying in 1981. She had two children from a previous marriage and three with Ebersol: Charlie, Willie and Teddy.

Jane Curtin, her co-star on “Kate & Allie,” paid tribute on Oct. 27. “We lost a decent person today,” Curtin told Page Six. She said Saint James worked with the Special Olympics “all the while raising children and going through the horrors of losing a child.”

In August, Saint James celebrated her 80th birthday at her home in Los Angeles. The Doobie Brothers, whose tours she had followed in the 1970s and ’80s, dedicated “Black Water” to her. It was Teddy’s favorite song. She told her family it was one of the best two days of her life.

What the coverage missed

The coverage treated the cause of death as the story. A death certificate confirmed metastatic pancreatic cancer. Page Six published the confirmation. The news cycle moved on.

The detail that got buried was the Doobie Brothers. At her 80th birthday, a band she had toured with played her dead son’s favorite song, and she called it one of the best days of her life. The cause of death is a medical fact. The song is a life.

Pancreatic cancer kills most of the people it touches. The five-year survival rate is about 13%. There is no routine screening test. Saint James died months after her diagnosis, which is typical, not exceptional. The coverage treated “months” as a celebrity detail. It is the disease.

The plane crash is mentioned as a biographical fact. Teddy Ebersol was 14. His older brother pulled their father from the wreckage. A playing field in Boston was named after him. None of the coverage connected the crash to the cancer, because they are separate events. They are not separate in the life of the mother.

What I think

Susan Saint James lived a life of public joy and private loss. She was on television. She was famous. She was, by every account, generous to strangers. She also buried a child and carried that loss for 22 years, and then she died of a cancer that gave her months.

The coverage confirmed a cause of death. The life was harder than that.

At her last birthday, a band played her son’s favorite song. She said it was one of the best days of her life. That is what it looks like when someone carries grief that long and still finds room for joy. The death certificate does not capture it. The coverage did not try.