A little empathy – At Home

Had my grandmother lived, she would have been 96 next month (October 31, to be exact); the same age as Queen Elizabeth II on her passing. As it was, she died in the mouth of Christmas 1995. She was 71-years-old. I was 19.

Thinking back, I can see now how her death hit me like a train.

I had previously never experienced the loss of someone so close, and so I was, in a way, helpless for a time in near perfect grief.

I was, as she herself used to say, “away wi’ the fairies”.

As other people do with their late friends and family, I think of her often.

It’s strange: I find sometimes the thought of her makes me smile and sometimes, it makes me well up. She was a proud woman, proud of her family, and proud of her little home and garden.

She was also dedicated to a fault, and she made the best bacon sandwiches I have ever tasted.

I remember her funeral in the brightest of tones.

It was a glorious day for December, at St Mary’s. I remember the open grave, and for me, an inner sensation of hanging on.

I remember losing it in the end; my grip on self-control, and I remember walking away from the graveside, arm-in-arm with my mother.

I remember my mother asking, “What are we going to do without her?” and I remember replying, “I don’t know.”

I am thinking about her again today in the wake of the Queen’s passing. Two women born in the same year, but with vastly different life trajectories. Two proud women with families and two dignified women, who have now breathed their last.

I am no royalist – far from it, in fact. I find the concept of a monarchy in any form to be outdated, and obsolete as to be ridiculous. And yet, neither I nor you can deny the fact that Queen Elizabeth was a human being first, and a monarch second.

She was also a mother, and a grandmother – although I don’t know if she ever made bacon sandwiches. I like to think she did.

Public figures are often poked at, jeered at, and sneered at, and Queen Elizabeth was no different.

They are often derided and mocked, and I personally can do as much mocking as the next person.

You might also point at the media circus which surrounded the
Queen’s death as excessive to the point of madness, but, at the same time, you don’t have to watch or listen, or read.

As I say, I’m no royalist, but I think there is something inherently wrong about laughing at, or even celebrating, someone’s death, which has been happening since Thursday evening – especially, perhaps, in these parts.

Had my own grandmother
been mocked in even the tiniest fraction of the way the Queen is still being mocked in some quarters, I would have lost it again – only this time, in a massively different way.

She might have been born into privilege, and she might have had the best of absolutely everything over the course of her life. But, unlike her ancestors, she did not ask for, or even take, that privilege.

The concept of ‘divine right’ is just plain stupid.

But, for me, the concept of epicaricacy is just plain wrong. Strip away all the shining pomp and stupid ceremony, and Elizabeth was just a person; albeit one with an extraordinary life.

As a non, and, even, anti-royalist, I still feel sorry for her children and grandchildren.

Someone is even today asking the question, “What are we going to do without her?”

And someone else is replying, “I don’t know.”

Sometimes a little empathy goes a long way