I just want to thank the many Gransnetters who have sent messages of sympathy and condolences to me on this thread and via PMs. My mother did not die yesterday, she died very recently and her funeral will be on Monday. I apologise if I mislead posters, I did not mean to when I said my mother just died. To me she has just died and yesterday I went to see her for the final time at the funeral home. I sat and talked to her for a while for the last time. I then returned home to hear the sad news that the Queen had died and I was overcome with grief, for my mother, the Queen, and the loss of the two women who have always been there since the day I was born.
Like Dickens I’m a republican, but the Queen has been there my whole life, and our national life has been bound up in the traditions, the celebrations, and the sadnesses of the royal family. None of us can avoid this, it is part of all of us. It seems strange to me that these two women, my mother and our Queen have lived together and died together and as a result, my whole life will be changed. My mother was a great royalist all her life.
I’m not the only person by any means who has lost a family member at about the same time as our Queen has died. I have received such caring compassion from Gransnetters, let us remember together then, both the royal family as they mourn, and all the countless other families in the country, as they mourn the loss of their loved ones too at this very difficult time.
