Harry’s sad birthday
AS birthdays go, it’s another one that’s not going to be very happy. And it has traumatic parallels to the 13th birthday Prince Harry marked just days after his mother’s funeral, 25 years ago.
Harry celebrates his 38th birthday on Thursday, but will have little to celebrate. The Duke of Sussex finds himself in the unenviable position of marking his milestone a week to the day after his grandmother’s death, midway through a period of public mourning for the record- breaking monarch.
The Sussexes were by coincidence in the UK on a small tour when the news broke on Thursday September 8, so cancelled their engagements, put their work on hold and stayed at their Windsor base – away from their children Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 1, who had remained in the USA.
And while Harry will no doubt find solace his family embraced him in their darkest hours – William and Catherine invited the estranged duo on a shared walkabout in Windsor on Sunday – he can’t fail to notice the exclusions, too.
Harry will not be able to wear military uniform at the funeral on Monday, because he is no longer a working Royal. This decision, it’s reported, would have been made by Charles and is doubly harsh because Harry was a serving member of the Forces.
When the family flew to Balmoral to be with the ailing Queen, Harry had to make his own way there, separate to William, Edward,
Sophie and Andrew, who travelled in an RAF jet.
According to reports, Harry did not eat dinner with his father and brother the night the Queen died, but instead dined with Andrew, Edward, Sophie and Anne in Balmoral, while William and Charles were at Birkhall, on the Balmoral estate.
While Charles made sure to pay tribute to his son and daughter-inlaw in his first speech on Friday, saying, “I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas”, insiders maintain there is still concern how much will be subsequently discussed in the Sussex’s podcasts and Netflix TV series.
Poignantly, Harry has been here before – it was 25 years ago Harry’s 13th birthday fell just nine days after the trauma of burying his mother Diana – and the horror that saw him forced to walk behind her coffin through the streets of London.
He has been open about his mental-health struggles dealing with having to grieve in public.
“My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by
thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television,” he told biographer
Angela Levin in Harry: Conversations with the Prince. “No child should lose their mother at such a young age and then have his grief observed by thousands of people.”
He can’t fail but feel the parallels, as he finds himself once more, blowing out his candles and wishing for a much happier year ahead.