In Good Company

This week I’ve come to appreciate the privacy we’ve had in our grieving. Not that we’ve been left alone, but we never had to face millions of people in death’s aftermath like Queen Elizabeth’s family has had to do. They seem like a family who cares deeply for one another so I hope they get time together and away from the public eye to express what they feel. No one can quite imagine their loss, and no one can fully describe ours as a nation.

As a dual national family, we have made a huge effort over the years to spend time with our extended family.  It occasionally broke my heart how much our kids missed the family they sensed ought to be living around the corner. One day when they were about ten and eight, Grace and Clay came to me with a set of demands, like a union boss might approach management. Negotiations led to a US road trip that summer to visit cousins—first ones, second ones and even the “removed” kind. The three of us drove from New York City to Nashville via Washington and the Blue Ridge Mountains. We saw old friends, family, and priceless Americana.

Grace’s main memory of the trip is the u-turn we made when I couldn’t find my wallet as I tried to pay a highway toll—and how a kind stranger posted on my new Facebook account to say they’d found it in the gas station restroom 50 miles back. I think that was also the car journey during which my iPhone was formally named. I climbed into the driver’s seat after filling the car with gas, only to see my phone on the rental car stereo re-named “She Broke Me Again”. That was Clay’s sense of humour. Back then I used to drop my phone a lot, repeatedly smashing the screen. To this day, if you want to share with me via Bluetooth, you’ll have to find She Broke Me Again on the list of available devices.

Some of my kids’ knowledge of the USA came from television and movies, like many British kids. Forest Gump was a favourite, so they’d seen Our Nation’s Capitol in the historical context of the 1960’s. When we visited in 2010, President Obama was in office and the monuments and malls were quiet by comparison. I introduced them to a second cousin living in Georgetown who arranged a tour of the White House. We also visited a family in nearby Virginia that used to live in England, whose daughters had been Grace’s and Clay’s very first friends. Their home was located on the street where American spy and double agent Robert Hanssen lived, near his actual hiding place for exchanging money and packets of secrets for the Russians. In Highlands, North Carolina we sampled our favourite BBQ ribs in all of America, and with NYC cousins we cooled off in the bracing surge of a pried-open Bronx fire hydrant in 100° heat.

Clay really loved his family, and he was very close to all four of his grandparents. He and my father shared a fondness for McDonald’s coffee, or maybe the price of a McDonald’s coffee. Clay was Mr Caramel Latte, and apparently Grandpa always asked for the Senior Special. Clay told us there was no such thing as a “Senior Special,” yet they never failed to hand him a free hot black coffee after a quizzical look and chatter behind the counter. Clay couldn’t decide whether they’d found him charming or reckoned he had old age dementia, but it did make him smile.

It feels like all that effort and expense of the trans-Atlantic travel produced the close bonds that make things harder now for everyone.   He was very close to both grandmothers, and I can’t imagine how they have suffered his loss and at the same time witnessed their own son and daughter grieve a son. I can’t think about it too long for how it adds to my own heaviness. Yet many times I’ve let myself wail and writhe in the arms of my mother, unable to consider her own suffering at all.  

Does sacrifice signal love’s worth? Sacrifice was not the mark of my love for Clay, at least until the difficult last months of his life. (One notable exception– birthing him at 10.5 lbs!) Now I don’t have a choice. Sacrifice must comprise a portion of the love for someone lost– a significant portion for a lost son or daughter. It’s the sacrifice of living on without him, avoided only by ending the relationship with his memory entirely. Some people do, but I’ll hang on in hope that the weight of it becomes lighter and joy settles in. Prince William, who is no stranger to grief, quoted his late grandmother this week when he said “Grief is the price we pay for love.” We who are in the trenches of grief are in good company.

Clay was British at birth, but in the year 2000 I swore an oath of allegiance to HM Queen Elizabeth II in order to gain my citizenship. I’ve been thinking about her reign— about duty, leadership, and personal choice, and the significance of her passing. Her position uniquely afforded her the opportunity to demonstrate the character of honourable leadership and service, without insisting that she agreed with a political view, or won votes, or made no mistakes. She made the most of that for 70 years. We let her be an example of good leadership. Most devastating for me about the Queen’s passing is how unlikely to be repeated (anywhere) is the confluence of such universal good will and expectation as is afforded by the ancient mandate of monarchy, and Queen Elizabeth’s dutiful commitment to meeting it for so long.  We admire her example of honourable service, but we can see it was not perfect leadership.  Perhaps it’s time now to commend good leadership wherever we can while accepting the reality of imperfect choices and not sweating the small stuff.  And for good leaders to step up to the plate. Or should I say ‘into the crease’?