KERRE McIVOR
PRINCE PHILIP’S FUNERAL MAKES A SENTIMENTAL KERRE THINK ABOUT OTHER SAD FAREWELLS IN HER LIFE
Ididn’t get up to watch the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, but I did watch it back a couple of days later. It was all everyone at work was talking about, so I watched a replay of it on television. And it was quite lovely. It really did seem to be a funeral that was all about Prince Philip having the final say.
I’d felt in the lead-up to the funeral that there had been so many tributes – verbal, pictorial and familial – that I could appreciate just how highly he was regarded by so many people. The tributes gave a much more honest portrayal of Philip the man than the rather one-dimensional character he was in the TV series The Crown.
Gosh, that series must have ignited his infamous temper. How awful it must be to have your family members and all their blessings, sadnesses, mistakes and intimacies imagined and re-purposed for the entertainment of the masses. I admit, I watched
The Crown, but I always knew it was fiction. Although they got some things right.
We have always known that the dashing, handsome Philip was the Queen’s one true love and they lived happily ever after. Well, not quite. Undoubtedly, they faced difficult times in their relationship, and a number of their children and grandchildren have proven to be a trial over the years, but 73 years of marriage is 73 years of marriage and while at times each may have gritted their teeth, in the end, they did their best by one another. And it was better than good enough.
The death of Prince Philip wasn’t unexpected. He was 99 and had been in ill health. But it was sad for those left behind. It always is.
My dad died at the ridiculously early age of 60 and I certainly wasn’t ready to lose him. I went to the funeral of one my oldest friend’s dad a couple of weeks ago. She’d had her dad a couple of decades longer than I had, but no one in her family was ready to say goodbye to a man they loved and respected.
You could see in the faces of Prince Philip’s children as they walked behind their father’s casket that they weren’t ready to say goodbye either.
And the Queen! How could your heart not break for that brave, indomitable woman, sitting alone in St George’s Chapel, farewelling the great love of her life. She is everything that is good, true and enduring about her generation. And gosh, how I hope she does endure!
When the beautiful but pared down, socially distanced choir sang God Save the Queen at the end of the service, I really wished there’d been a thousand-strong massed choir, bellowing out the fervent wish that God would indeed save our Queen and keep her here forever.
The great reconciliation between Prince Harry and his family didn’t take place – well, if it did, it didn’t take place on camera.
That poor family, though. With so much attention on them, with lip readers poised to watch the television coverage to try to decipher their every utterance, it would have been hard to feel that you could really grieve for the man you loved in front of the cameras. That would probably come later, in the quiet of night, when the inevitable regrets for all the things said and not said, done and unable to be undone, come to the fore.
It was a beautiful funeral.
I’m glad I watched it because, in the end, this was the story so many of us know.
A woman loves a man. She builds a life with him. They grow old together and then he dies. And she, and the family who love him, wonder how they will go on without this tower, this rock, this pillar of certainty for them all.
‘It would have been hard to feel that you could really grieve in front of the cameras’