In Memoriam

 

So it has happened: The Queen died yesterday afternoon at Balmoral. It truly is the end of an era. The announcement of her death, the obituaries, dominate the news and the front pages of the media, not just here in the UK but across the world. 

There are already photos galore of bunches of flowers laid at the gates to Windsor Castle and Holyrood Palace. There are photos of people having streamed down the mall to stand at the gates of Buckingham Palace. Two images from the first MSM editions yesterday evening will remain in my memory. One is that last photo of her, after she’d met and dispatched that new PM, How frail she looked, how tiny. The other is a photo of London’s black cabs, their ‘for hire’ lights lit, filling the Mall from side to side and end to end. 

The first is a poignant symbol and reminder that the Queen has fulfilled the promise she gave to the people of Great Britain and what later became the Commonwealth: to serve and do her duty. How old-fashioned this now looks in the face of a modern, social-media driven culture where everybody can claim to be a victim, where the concept of ‘serving’ has become utterly foreign. 

The second image stands for the generations of British people who lived during her reign, who knew in their hearts what the Queen stood for, who didn’t need social media, talking heads, politicians and other media celebrities to tell them how they felt and that therefore they must feel the same.

The outpourings from presidents and PMs across the world, suitably brief on social media, read more like another exercise of ‘MeToo’. There was one such however which I found moving. It came from the previous PM, Boris Johnson, and I quote it here for the record:

“Former prime minister Boris Johnson said: “This is our country’s saddest day. In the hearts of every one of us there is an ache at the passing of our Queen, a deep and personal sense of loss – far more intense, perhaps, than we expected. In these first grim moments since the news, I know that millions and millions of people have been pausing whatever they have been doing, to think about Queen Elizabeth, about the bright and shining light that has finally gone out. She seemed so timeless and so wonderful that I am afraid we had come to believe, like children, that she would just go on and on. Wave after wave of grief is rolling across the world, from Balmoral – where our thoughts are with all the royal family – and breaking far beyond this country and throughout that great Commonwealth of nations that she so cherished and which cherished her in return.” (paywalled link)

Death, the death of anyone, creates a pause, a break in the lives of those remaining – families, friends, and now in the life of our Nation. It is a moment for reflection, for collecting memories. It is not yet a time for demanding to turn to the future. Confirming the age-old saying that in the face of death we are all equal, the true end, the final drawing of a curtain, comes after the funeral. This applies to all who have buried members of their families and friends family members and applies equally to Queen Elizabeth II.

So let’s refrain for the time being from speculating about what the new reign of the new king, Charles III, will mean. Let’s instead permit ourselves to mourn for the death of this tiny lady, the towering figure who was there during all the important events afflicting our Nation. The permission, if needed, is given in this famous poem by John Donne:

 

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man 

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 

own were; any man’s death diminishes me, 

because I am involved in mankind. 

And therefore never send to know for whom 

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

 

That’s why we can mourn for the Queen even if most of us have never met her. However, I hold with the good tradition of a wake where we get together and remember with tears and above all with laughter, so I invite you to a virtual wake in the comment posts.



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