Patti Davis , Ronald Reagan's daughter, writes of when a private loss requires public grief.
. . . My father was the beacon of light we all gravitated to, no matter how we felt about each other. When forces like this die, the fault lines in the family that were always there remain. Yet the beauty of memorial services and funerals is that for a while, that breakage is healed.
During the five days of services for my father, on each coast, we were more of a family than we'd ever been. I didn't want it to end. As we were flying back to California from Washington, DC, for the final service and burial, I said to my mother: "Can't we just fly around a bit more? Go to some other states? I'm sure they'd welcome us." She smiled, sadly, and I'm not sure if she knew that I was saying I wanted the fragile peace we had during those days to last.
Several times during that period, friends remarked on how hard it must have been to mourn in public. I always said, "No, that actually was the easy part." I felt thousands of locked hands beneath me, keeping me from falling. That's also why I didn't want the week to end. Once it did, I would be left with the solitariness of my own grief, slogging through the waters that would inevitably rise around me.
Even if you are the royal family, the most famous family in the world, everyone doesn't see everything about you. There is grief that spills out in the shadows. We need to remember that when we watch the public ceremonies surrounding the queen's passing. . .
Driving home through dark quiet streets, I knew the river of grief that was waiting for me, and I knew I would have to cross it alone.
My hope is that people remember this about the royal family: In the end, though they breathe rarefied air, they grapple as we all do with life and death, with the mystery of what it means to be human. When darkness falls, and they are alone, they sink into the same waters that everyone does when a loved one dies. And they wonder if they'll make it to the other side.
Grief doesn't end with a funeral but after it, people outside the inner circle of grievers return to normal life while those inside that circle are left to come to terms with the knowledge that normal isn't normal any more.
And that normal is forever.
Grief is sometimes likened to an illness from which the grievers recover.
It's more like a wound.
At first it bleeds profusely and the pain is so intense it's all consuming.
The love and support of family and friends can help dull the pain and stem the blood, sometimes professional help is needed, but even with that, the slightest knock will restart the bleeding and the pain.
Gradually a scab forms. At first it's still tender and easily dislodged, often unexpectedly and at inopportune moments.
Eventually, and there's no rule on how long that takes, the wound heals but the grievers are left with a scar that will always be with them and even years after the grief wound was inflicted it can hurt.
This doesn't mean grief is always all consuming, nor that it's not possible to be happy and enjoy life again.
It means that grief changes you and while you can, and most do, adjust to the new normal, it can never be normal as it used to be.
Tonight (New Zealand time), Queen Elizabeth II's life will be celebrated at her funeral and she buried beside her husband and parents.
The world will keep turning, the media will find something else on which to focus, and normal will be normal for most of us.
But not for those whose grief is so personal and who will have to adjust to a new normal without the one they loved.
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