My wife told me as I was coming down the stairs of our home.

Benazir Bhutto had been shot. It numbed me — not quite as personal as news of a family member's death. But close. Close to the feeling I had when I heard Princess Di had been killed in that tunnel. I'd known it was coming. I'd sensed these were women on the edge, in danger, so close to the end.

Perhaps only in death do we really know people. This woman who could so mobilize a nation's passions was a kind of political household word in halls of power around the world. News of her death headlined instantly in online newspapers in Jerusalem, London, New York, Singapore, and — of course — Karachi. She had been put under house arrest for a time. She had been attacked in just such a motorcade only ten weeks earlier. The Times of London appeared to have background slide shows and written material on the shelf ready to roll. They knew.

Bhutto seemed a woman capable of leadership in her region of the world — a region where women aren't commonly seen in positions of authority. But as news of her death circled the planet, word came also of just how divisive a woman of intellect and passion could be to a nation trapped in chains of fear.

Bhutto had impressive educational credentials — Harvard, Oxford, and the pop-culture education of one who knew New York, vacationed in Switzerland, and sat at the feet of political discussion from her earliest life. Yet when she had campaigned for election in recent months, she had struggled to pronounce words in Urdu.

Bhutto had sought to be a human bridge between the optimism of the democratic world and the cynicism of those regions where those in power considered the greater populace unfit to govern themselves. Bhutto's passion for change had about it an aroma of death that she couldn't shake. In the end, it overcame her words, her ideas, her logic.

Bhutto had seen her father just before he was hanged and as she looked in those eyes, probably gained an education few in this country will ever know. She was no stranger to the specter of violence and the terrorist ethos of those for whom hate was a way of life.

Details are sketchy, but on the day she died, police in Karachi and those onlookers willing to talk to the press said Bhutto died waving.

She was on the way to safety, driving away from a rally that was full of the political rhetoric that enfuriated her enemies. She was retreating and probably would have been safely with friends or family soon. But she had a tradition of giving back — letting her supporters know they mattered to her.

She poked her head and arms out of the car just far enough to give love to the crowds who were always wanting just a glimpse, a touch if possible.

That's when the shots rang out. It didn't take many. She was as frail as the elegant robes she wore, as vulnerable as a flower. She collapsed into the car, bleeding from one side of her face. Within seconds the suicide bomber's explosion rocked the car.

Medical experts on the scene said she never regained consciousness after falling from her position of farewell gesture. Her heart failed and could not be resuscitated.

And though she was beyond knowing it, the violence she had rallied to stop erupted in the streets of Karachi with new vengeance.

The world suffered a loss it will take months, even years to unravel. But part of the unraveling was a letter she wrote to a Washington Post journalist. She'd told him to keep it under wraps until the day she was assassinated — almost a "when" rather than an "if" about it.