Mourning

For twelve hours, we snaked through London, a jumble of humans united through our need or desire to mark the death of a Queen. A small pilgrimage to death itself, I wanted to see Queen Elizabeth’s coffin with my own eyes. I carried the memory of my mother, whose “good death” came in her early nineties, and the anticipated death of a friend living out the final stages of her cancer. Her death I imagine as “good” in a different way - conscious, accepted, painful yet full of grace.

How do we interpret such intricate rituals to mark the end of a life? Few of us will be the subject of such complex collective mourning. For me, it was an invitation to mark the significance of human life in all its particularity as well as the simple, levelling mystery of death. Passing the coffin, so small in the great hall, I felt a stab of human grief. But at the funeral, I saw the care of those young lads who carried the coffin and heard the collective honour in rhythmic marching feet. Long after the event, the lone piper lingers as well as the waiting, riderless horse.

Twelve hours flowing towards death while a woman mud-larked on the bank of the Thames and three young dancers twirled yellow capes in the mid-day sun. Life ended; life valued; life begun.