THE SUDDENNESS OF HER PASSING

THE MORNING of Thursday, September 8, saw me happily rising from bed to greet a perfectly lovely late summer day. I had been enjoying some vacation time since Labor Day and, as it happened, it had rained each day. On Wednesday evening, however, the clouds at last ceased their downpouring and floated away, leaving clear skies in their wake.

On Thursday morning, therefore, I was determined to make the most of the only nice-weather day in my four-day-long holiday, so I headed to a beach club which I frequent during the summer months. Although I often have steamed clams for lunch when I go to that club, I anticipated a cheeseburger this time instead, since this place has what I am convinced are the very best burgers in the known universe. A burger, then, I was determined to order.

As I prepared to depart, however, news began to trickle in that there was some sort of stirring at Balmoral. Members of the British royal family were said to be travelling to the highland retreat of Queen Elizabeth II because the doctors were concerned for her health. Well. Okay.

I wanted to dismiss the news as nothing more than another minor royal health scare, like so many we have encountered during the past couple of years. And why shouldn’t it be dismissed as just that, after all? Only two days earlier, the queen was all smiles and looking well as she greeted incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss in audience at her home. No, she hadn’t travelled to London to attend to that duty, but we all knew that the queen, at her advanced age, was experiencing mobility issues and couldn’t just dart off the way she might have been able to in the past. Why should she have to curtail her vacation to accommodate the foibles of Tory politicians, in any case?

Even as news commentators began to insist that it was highly extraordinary for members of the royal family to be scrambling to travel en masse up to Balmoral, my instinct was still that it was so much media hyperbole and hyperventilation I was hearing, and that this was just a matter of a bad spell that had befallen a woman in her 96th year. She would surely recover. She must, of course, recover, in fact, because we had all decided, as a planet, I think, that Elizabeth II would live to see her centenary, and even surpass it, just as her mother, the late Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, had done.

Part way during my 30-minute-long lakeside drive to the beach, however, I tuned into the news on Sirius to discover that the story of the queen’s health was the sole topic of commentary, not only on the BBC but in the US media, as well. At that point I realized something was not normal and began to understand that perhaps things were a bit more grave than I supposed they had any right to be on such a beautiful day.

After finally arriving at the beach and placing my order, I pulled out my cellphone to resume my earlier communications via messenger with a Hanoverian peer who lives in the UK. Prior to leaving for the club, I had made some quip to him about the abilities of Liz Truss to lead the world in mourning should the unthinkable come to pass. He replied that we might be hearing from Nicola Sturgeon rather than Liz Truss, in any event, as ‘Operation Unicorn’ would be triggered. He had to explain to me what ‘Operation Unicorn’ was. I hadn’t heard of it. Turns out that is the name given to the plans in place to contend with a monarch who has passed away at Balmoral while vacationing in Scotland.

It was only after I had enjoyed my lunch that my Anglo-Hanoverian friend informed me that the unthinkable had, in fact, happened. Queen Elizabeth II had died. Prince Charles had become king of England. The duchess of Cornwall was now queen.

I hadn’t yet really digested the news that the queen was seriously ill, at that point, and suddenly she was dead! The setting in which I found myself, furthermore—a beach club on a sunny day with Reggae music playing—could not in any way reconcile itself to the news I had just learned. I found myself entirely unresponsive to the news, as it happens, as if it wasn’t actually real…as though I hadn’t actually heard it. It wasn’t so much disbelief as it was a sense of “Well, that’s unexpected”.

I felt in the moment no shock, no grief, no horror…no emotions at all, as a matter of fact. It was what it was. That was the end of the book. That was all she wrote. 

Across the lake, in the distance, I could see Canada and thought to myself how often I had thought of that neighboring land mass as the queen's realm. Now, suddenly, it was the king's. 

Then came the flood of messages and emails by friends and acquaintances asking me what happens next. They know that I am a bit more in the know about these things than they are, and enquiring minds wanted to know. 

I found myself instantly transported into the new reign and talk of titles and accession councils and coronations and the like. It was a whirlwind which was reflected in my own social media activity that day.

But today, the day after, I now have had time to attempt to absorb this news and as I do, I think I feel a bit cheated of a seemly psychological set-up for the processing of the passage into eternity of this incredibly significant figure in history. It was all just so sudden. It was all so unexpected. It didn’t make sense in a way.

When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, his passing played out just as one would have expected it to. There was a long, dramatic lead-up to the moment of his death. The world knew the pope’s passing was imminent; crowds began to gather in St Peters Square; there were spontaneous candlelight vigils; people prayed and openly wept for days. When the pontiff finally passed away, his death was confirmed by the somber tolling of a bell, and the whole world seemed to be gripped by the moment.

I suppose I expected the passing of this queen, who had reigned for 70 years, to be a bit more like that, if I am honest. I am left, instead, with a complete lack of the sense of feeling gripped by the moment. She has died. That is that; and we’ve moved on to a new reign. Neither Britain nor the world has suffered the massive meltdown that I half-suspected would occur upon the death of the queen. The scenario is very calm, and the sense of grief seems all too understated.

Some reading this are now wanting to respond, “Rightly so; just as she would have wanted it. Chin up, stiff upper lip. Keep calm and carry on. That is the English way.” Oh, be quiet, you. It wasn’t the English way when Diana passed, but then, of course, that was the passing of a young woman after a horrific and bloody car accident; a Grace Kelly moment on steroids.

This remains, to me, at any rate, an unsatisfying conclusion to this remarkable reign. Elizabeth II’s death was anti-climactic in the extreme. She ought to have lived to 101. There ought to have been a long illness to prepare us for the inevitability of her passing. There should have been a dramatic and lengthy vigil at the gates of Windsor Castle, with oceans of flowers placed all around the fencing just as happened at the news of Diana’s passing. 

There ought to have been reporters poking microphones in the faces of weeping Britons, asking them what the queen meant to them. There ought to have been the tolling of a bell to signal to the world that the queen had taken her final breath.

Shouldn’t there have been all that and then some after so long and monumental a reign?

I thought there ought to have been. It was not so. It didn't play out as I imagined it would have. Not at all.

Ah, but there were those rainbows, weren’t there? That did happen, did it not? Well, that’s something, I suppose.

The queen is dead, it seems. Long live the king.