King’s illness may serve to unite father and son
Learning a close family member is seriously ill always comes as a shock. The distress is worse when the person lives far away, as we cannot see them to understand what he or she is going through.
During the Covid pandemic, many families experienced this anxiety of being isolated from ill relatives, particularly elderly parents.
We can therefore sympathise with Prince Harry when he was notified of his father’s cancer diagnosis.
Prince Harry was once admired worldwide. He reminded people of Princess Diana. But he also displayed his own charm and a praiseworthy commitment to his country.
Prince Harry sought to be treated like any other soldier during his army service. In fact, he served two tours of Afghanistan.
Sadly, today, Harry’s image is a casualty. Since Harry and wife Meghan abandoned royal duties and moved to California in 2020, they have tried repeatedly to cash in by setting up business ventures while retaining royal titles.
Meghan said the couple needed to attain a state of “thriving” rather than “surviving”. Unfortunately, the pair has sabotaged their own efforts to find peace.
To win over public opinion, Harry and Meghan told dramatic tales of how harshly they were treated by the Royal Family.
Harry alleged “the Firm”, as the Royal Family is known, forced him to carry out stressful public duties, without providing any support.
But it became clear Harry and Meghan were more interested in advancing their own muddled selfinterest than in telling a faithful account of events.
The couple contradicted themselves in interviews, Harry’s autobiography Spare and even a sixpart Netflix series.
Both the late Queen Elizabeth and King Charles were very kind to Harry and Meghan. Harry admitted as much in Spare.
He described times they helped him overcome personal problems as a teenager and young man. Later, both welcomed Meghan into the family.
As public opinion turned against the fickle couple, they failed to knuckle down to hard work.
Harry and Meghan have lost opportunities, with Spotify’s CEO describing them as “grifters”.
Of course, the cost runs far deeper than money.
In his book Spare, Harry exposed intimate family moments, betraying his father and brother William.
Harry is now estranged from a family that does not trust him. His two children cannot enjoy the company of their extended family, including William’s children George, Charlotte and Louis, their cousins.
This estrangement may have been tolerable while Harry was “living the dream” in California.
But such an existence is only a temporary escape.
With King Charles’ cancer diagnosis, a time of reckoning is here.
Harry moved swiftly, hopping on a flight to see his father within a day of the news. Some have criticised this action as selfish, noting it upset King Charles’ own plans.
By all accounts, Harry and the King had the briefest of meetings, clocking in at barely 30 minutes.
Some reports even suggested that
Royal advisers took special precautions to safeguard the King’s privacy because of Harry’s past.
Serious illness is a wake-up call not just for the person experiencing it but their nearest and dearest.
We realise anew our time on earth is short and precious. Often the person is scared, however brave he or she appears on the surface. Having close family or friends present is vital to a good recovery.
If good can ever be said to come out of a troubling diagnosis, it is the good that comes from family members supporting each other afterwards.
In this sense, Harry’s situation is not unusual.
The stakes are high because Harry’s family is not just any family. It is a Royal Family.
But at its most simple, this story is about a suffering father and an unhappy son.
When Spare came out, Colonel
Richard Kemp, a former British commander in Afghanistan, was a vocal critic, saying of Harry: “I see only disappointment and misery in his pursuit of riches he does not need and his rejection of family and comradely love that he badly needs.”
Ultimately, we hope Harry and his father reconcile sooner rather than later. Any one of us can fall into the trap of thinking there is all the time in the world to heal an old wound. If we miscalculate and the opportunity vanishes forever, regret can be overwhelming.
And when we watch someone close to us experience serious illness, many arguments we once thought important start to seem petty and inconsequential.
Each of these past problems fade away until, eventually, we are left, hopefully, with the realisation that only love endures.