God Bless Her

 

Life has been overwhelming the last couple of years. My personal experience has been that the isolation brought on by the covid pandemic has made me starved for human interaction, but it is difficult to get out and be with people when you know you might catch covid and die as a result. Yes, I am vaccinated, and boosted. So were both my kids when they got covid, and they are young, but I am old, which makes me vulnerable. I find that fear of death puts a real damper on my enthusiasm for socializing.

Then there is Mr. Putin’s war. I am heartsick, as are millions of people – heartsick that this irrational, pointless aggression is causing the deaths of thousands of people, many of them innocent civilians, and destruction of the Ukrainian homeland, and for what? So Mr. Putin can have the pleasure of waving his little Russian dick around? This is not reason enough to die or kill. But here we are.

Then there are the shootings in America, of which we have a sporadic flurry of awareness, which soon gets superseded by another news cycle or singing competition, so we forget until the next time. Right now the slaughter of innocents in Uvalde, Texas, is uppermost in our minds. Children. Beautiful, innocent children, cut down by another child with an AR-15. What will we do about it? I’m waiting to see.

The January 6 hearings in Congress remind us of the brutality of that day. What we have here in this country is a lot more than a mere division of people, but what may be a terminal illness of the American experiment.

I almost forgot to mention climate change.

Whew.

Life is difficult – an easy day is the exception, not the norm – but this persistent, ongoing high stress and dismay, and the way it keeps piling on top of our regular lives (which are hard enough) is wearing some of us down, adults and children alike.

But now comes Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. God bless her. She has served seventy years on the throne. She promised to dedicate her life to serving her people, and she has done that.

She grew up with parents who loved her, and for the first ten years of her life did not bear the weight of expecting to become the monarch. Her Uncle David, Edward the VIII, screwed that up, although that may have been a lucky escape for the world, considering his sympathy for Hitler. In Edward’s place we got Bertie, Elizabeth’s father, who became George VI, and when he passed, we got Queen Elizabeth II.

When I say “we,” I mean the whole world, not just Britain. She is the only British monarch I remember. I was born in 1948, and by the time I was aware that there was an England, and she was its queen, her presence was something I took for granted. She has always been there, steady, gracious, non-dramatic, doing her duty, surrounded by people whose lives are all about serving her, protecting her, making sure everything runs smoothly. She is the center of what her family calls The Firm, and all the people who depend on The Firm for their livelihoods.

Many Americans are fascinated by the Queen and her family, including me at times. I got up in the middle of the night to watch Charles and Diana’s wedding. Years later I got up in the middle of the night to watch Diana’s funeral service, with my mouth hanging open as Diana’s brother Charles, Earl Spencer, tore the Royal Family a new one for the way they treated Diana.

The Royals. They distract us, amuse us, outrage us, remind us of a time and a way of life that has been dead and gone for decades. Centuries.

I speculate that many Americans today would prefer to be happy subjects of the crown, with all the questions that would answer, knowing royal rule as familiar and comfortable. It is fun to watch and feel ownership for people who live lives so different than our own. Apparently. When I think of all the political scandals and wars over which QEII has reigned, I am sure that America’s political and imperialistic hijinks would have been usual days at the office for her.

Our story would be so different if there had been no Revolution, although I think that we might have done as most of the rest of the British empire and declared ourselves independent nations by now. I like to think I’d be living in the country of Baja Canada, with its three states, Oregon, California, and something other than Washington, because he was a hero of the Revolution.

Anyway: Queen Elizabeth II. God bless her. She has given seventy devoted, stable, consistent years as Queen. Seventy years of living her life in service to her people, inspiring us and being one stable fact in this unstable world. She will live in history as an example of the best of us.

If we have a history.