How do you cope with your own private grief in the face of a country in national mourning?
The UK is in a period of national mourning. HM Queen Elizabeth II passed away peacefully, yet seemingly suddenly, last Thursday, and the world seemed to temporarily stop. TV programming was cancelled, radio stations played sad songs if they played any music at all. Events were cancelled, flags were flown at half mast. Parliament has been recessed until after the funeral. The day of the funeral itself will be a public holiday, with shops and businesses across the country closed. All of this is protocol and the way it's done for Royalty. It is the way we honour the lifetime of service of our Queen.
When you are grieving too, then the reactions that the death of a public figure - especially one as well known and loved as the Queen - can trigger a variety of reactions. Young widows I have spoken to have described feeling devastated, or feeling detached, or even feeling resentful. Worse still, it can feel that when the nation is grieving there is no space to feel the loss of the person that we loved.
In some cases it can trigger the memories of losing our loved one. On top of the sadness and empathy for the Royal family, we relive when it happened to us. We see King Charles giving a speech with red rimmed eyes, and remember the shock we felt and the tears that wouldn't be held back, and wonder how he is keeping it together, having to greve in public in this way. We recall having to tell our children, our family or our friends what had happened. Preparing the eulogy, planning the funeral. Conversations with uncaring banks and utility companies. Endless form filling. The memories of the worst time in our lives flood back.
In other cases we can find ourselves looking on in confusion, but feeling removed from it. An elderly person we didn't know personally, who had had a long and privileged life. When my father died, 2 years after my husband, I felt detached, it was like having an out of body experience. My brain was not ready to process this loss as well, and I went through the motions, became intensely practical, trying to help Mum organise the funeral. The risk of allowing Dad's death to trigger me back to the early days of losing Chris was too much. I must have seemed cold and hard to the people around at the time. So I can understand the reaction of detachment that some might feel.
I don't begrudge the Royals their pomp and ceremony really, but I also understand the feelings of resentment that it can provoke. While I can rationalise it, being a bit further along the road now, I still can't help thinking back to how I wanted - even needed - the world to stop when Chris died. The poem made famous in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral - Stop all the clocks - is how so many of us feel after a bereavement. One of the most incomprehensible things in the early days is how the world doesn't stop. In confusion we look around asking ourselves - How is it possible that the sun keeps rising and setting, that parties and celebrations go on, that work is still there, that everything is the same, when our loved one has just died? How is everyone going about as normal - don't they realise that the universe has just lost our wonderful person? When a Royal dies, the clocks do stop, there is a period of national mourning where everyone is forced to acknowledge the service and sacrifice and value of the person who has died. Is it really unresonable of us to wish that our person could have had that recognition too - even while rationally understanding that their scope of influence was so much smaller than that of the Queen?
If I have learned anything in the last 4 years it is that there is nothing rational about grief! Whether you feel the loss of the Queen as keenly as if it were a family member, or you feel detached, thrown back into your own early days of loss, or resentful that your loved one didn't qualify for a state funeral and multiple gun salute, I think these are all valid and natural reactions. Find friends you can talk to without judgement and allow yourself to process those feelings, recognising that this is all part of your personal journey.
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