On a world level there has been great and sudden and impactful change. A great, sudden loss. Impossible to ignore that, even if I wanted to.
Actually, I don’t want to: I have always had a kind of grudging fascination for the Royal family and I’m in awe of the Queen who seemed to keep her marbles and impeccable standards intact for all of her 96 years. Who does that? How many have that privilege? Well, literally, no-one else – not to that degree. She was like a perfect mother figure; constant, wise, non-judgmental and loving. I loved her sense of duty – she had one job and she would that one thing perfectly. I saw affection in her duty, to her people and to her family. I admired that about her. Her passing has been felt by me personally.
I thought the funeral day was wonderful. The British do pomp and circumstance better than anyone else and we were reminded of that again. I understand the Queen had a heavy hand in striking the balance between proper ceremony, ritual, saying goodbye and showing outrageous opulence. She wanted to avoid something that would get long and boring and over-mournful and I think she found exactly the right balance. How moving was every part of the day itself, as well as the days leading up to that day? We’ll never forget it, that’s for sure.
On the day that I heard of the Queen’s death I’d arranged to meet my daughter, the grandchildren and the sisters of her late husband to commemorate his birthday. I had mixed feelings about that – we were definitely not celebrating, just remembering, and I was already sad about that, but then we had to accept the loss of the Queen too. To say “I’ll just avoid the news for a while” to avoid feeling even more sad didn’t seem realistic even then. Now I understand how triggering the loss of a really famous person is on the collective anyway, and as this famous person was something of a parental figure too, I know it’s only natural to remember our own personal losses recent or historic. So the nation is in a period of grief and while the Queen was so old and we might have expected she must leave us soon, still there’s no way to prepare for a significant person passing out of our lives.
And we need to also acknowledge we’ve been the privileged ones, just to have had that love.