'We know that his flame lives on, in each of us': Meghan McCain remembers her father, Sen. John McCain

Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP

Sen. John McCain introduces his daughter Meghan at a 2008 campaign stop in Pennsylvania.

• Meghan McCain, one of Sen. John McCain's daughters, remembered her father, who died on Saturday, in a heartfelt statement.
• The veteran senator and war hero, 81, died of complications stemming from brain cancer.
• "All that I am is thanks to him. Now that he is gone, the task of my lifetime is to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love," Meghan wrote.

Meghan McCain, one of Sen. John McCain's daughters, remembered her father, who died on Saturday, in a heartfelt statement.

"I was with my father at his end, as he was with me at my beginning. In the thirty-three years we shared together, he raised me, taught me, corrected me, comforted me, encouraged me, and supported me in all things," she wrote. "All that I am is thanks to him. Now that he is gone, the task of my lifetime is to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love."

Meghan, a prominent conservative pundit and cohost of ABC's "The View," is the most famous among his children and has been outspoken about the challenges of her family's struggle with the aggressive form of brain cancer, the malignant brain tumor glioblastoma, that ultimately killed her father.

During a December episode of the talk show, former Vice President Joe Biden consoled her and said that if "anybody" could overcome that cancer, it was her father.

The senator, 81, was a part of many of the past three decades' most significant political moments. He was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee in a contest he lost to President Barack Obama. He also sought the presidency in 2000, mounting a primary campaign against President George W. Bush.

McCain is survived by his 106-year-old mother Roberta, seven children, and his second wife, Cindy, whom he married in 1980 following a 15-year marriage to Carol Shepp.

Read Meghan's full statement below:

"My father, United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, departed this life today.

I was with my father at his end, as he was with me at my beginning. In the thirty-three years we shared together, he raised me, taught me, corrected me, comforted me, encouraged me, and supported me in all things. He loved me, and I loved him. He taught me how to live. His love and his care, ever present, always unfailing, took me from a girl to a woman - and he showed me what it is to be a man.

All that I am is thanks to him. Now that he is gone, the task of my lifetime is to live up to his example, his expectations, and his love.

My father's passing comes with sorrow and grief for me, for my mother, for my brothers, and for my sisters. He was a great fire who burned bright, and we lived in his light and warmth for so very long. We know that his flame lives on, in each of us. The days and years to come will not be the same without my dad - but they will be good days, filled with life and love, because of the example he lived for us.

Your prayers, for his soul and for our family, are sincerely appreciated.

My father is gone, and I miss him as only an adoring daughter can. But in this loss, and in this sorrow, I take comfort in this: John McCain, hero of the republic and to his little girl, wakes today to something more glorious than anything on this earth. Today the warrior enters his true and eternal life, greeted by those who have gone before him, rising to meet the Author of All Things:

'The dream is ended: this is the morning.'"

Allan Smith contributed reporting.