Two days ago, my brother Ron texted to tell me that Queen Elizabeth had died. You may be wondering why my American brother felt moved to share this with his American sister. Even more puzzling will be my confession that I felt emotional upon receiving this news.
It’s not that The Queen loomed large in my life. She did not. I am a not a royalist, and I did not pay close attention to the British royals. Oh, sure, I enjoyed gossip about her disfunctional family as much as the next person, but, really, what is royalty for in the twenty-first century?
There is this, though -- the queen was a bit like furniture. Let’s call her political furniture, a world leader who was always where we expected her to be, doing what we expected her to do. She was the one unchanging political fact of the twentieth century. So, it’s odd, even dislocating, that she is gone.
But I don’t think that is why my brother texted me, and it is not why I felt emotional upon hearing the news.
It was all about my mother.
My mother, who was a Scot, loved the queen, and, while it is true that she would bristle if anyone in her adopted America mistook her Scottish accent for an English accent, she was proud to be British. And she did love the queen, spoke of her as if she knew her personally. So, given that they were on a first-name basis, I will here refer to the queen simply as Elizabeth.
My mother was born in Glasgow six years before Elizabeth’s birth in London. She left this life at age 93; Elizabeth made it to 96. And, although their circumstances could not have been more different, both came of age during, and were shaped by, what my parents’ generation simply referred to as “the war.” (WWII)
My mother always spoke with admiration about Elizabeth’s father, who, after ascending the throne upon his brother’s abdication, stayed with his wife in London during The Blitz. Elizabeth and her sister spent most of the war at Windsor Castle, 20 miles outside of London. My mother and her sister, having little choice, remained in Glasgow, which was bombed during the Blitz.
In 1940, when she was 20, my mother supported the war effort by joining The Women’s Forestry Service, doing what was then considered men’s work, while the men were off fighting.
In 1944, when she was 18, Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British army, as an auto mechanic.
In 1943, when she was 23, my mother married my father. She gave birth to her first child, eleven months later. Two more children followed. In 1947, when she was 21, Elizabeth married her prince. Her first child was born a year later. Three more children followed.
Elizabeth was still a princess when my parents left Scotland for the new world, and when the princess became queen a few years later, my mother proudly displayed her portrait, along with one of Prince Philip, on our living room wall. So, although most of you probably picture Elizabeth as an old woman, the young queen was a fixture of my childhood.
For all of her long life, my mother followed Elizabeth with great attention, speaking of her often and with affection, perhaps even a bit of wistfulness. I think the royal family was a link to the life she had reluctantly left behind when my father decided that the family should move -- first to Canada, and then to the U.S.
And, so, I am calling my emotion over the queen’s death mourning by proxy. I am my mother’s proxy, feeling some of what I believe she would have felt. (I am deeply grateful that she did not live to hear the news of Elizabeth’s passing.) Or maybe it is that the queen was a proxy for my mother. As long as the queen was alive, my mother’s parallel life wasn’t quite over.
I don’t know if the monarchy will survive the queen’s passing, and I don’t much care. I just know that two young women grew up and grew old, more-or-less in tandem, and the second of them has died.
For this I mourn.
