There’s an awful lot of flapdoodle around over the public’s supposed “grief” – and not for the first time.
Ours what? Our “grief”? Come on.
The queen said so herself – the fictional one at least.
There’s an awful lot of flapdoodle around over the public’s supposed “grief” – and not for the first time.
Ours what? Our “grief”? Come on.
The queen said so herself – the fictional one at least.
Comments
10 responses to “Their grief?!”
Here’s some of what I wrote about this on Ovarit. Many women replied to say they were grieving their own parents and grandparents.
People are mourning relatives, particularly parents and grandparents, that they have lost and haven’t really been able to grieve for. This is an opportunity to grieve for a lot of things that our culture hasn’t given us permission to express our genuine emotions about.
I don’t think people are actually grieving for a woman they never met. They’re collectively grieving over a lot of things, some personal and some more widely shared. And let’s face it, we all have a lot to grieve about right now.
We’ve just been through a pandemic in which many many people were unable to be with their loved ones when they died, or hold or attend funerals for them. And during which many many people had to keep it together and get on with things, with no ‘luxury’ of being able to just drop the ‘it’s OK we’ll get by’ facade and really experience what’s happened to us. And just like that, it was ‘over’ and everything’s now supposed to be ‘back to normal’, with no real public recognition of what our entire country/world has been through and no acknowledgement of the pain so many people suffered.
As one of her late Majesty’s subjects, I have to confess to feeling no grief at all when I learned that she had died. I did feel some regret that the hope that we would never be landed with a King Charles III was dashed.
I am dreading the whole King Choss thing – he’ll be lecturing us on homeopathy and architecture and carbuncles and god knows what, every chance he gets.
No, Ophelia, the one and only benefit of King Chuck is that as King he will no longer be able to promote his bullshit or his environmentalism. All that stops now.
Other than that, the death of his mother means no more to me than the death of any other old woman I didn’t know.
Old women are worthless, aren’t they.
No, not at all. My meaning was why should a mourn an old woman I don’t know? I mourned my 82 year old grandmother, my 88 year old MIL, and no doubt will mourn my mother, although as she approaches 91, I am sure she intends to outlive me.
In fact, should I outlive you, although we never met, I would also mourn your death. Yours would mean far more to my life than Betty Windsor’s ever did.
I think Guest’s points are very on point. My mother and QE2 were born in the same year. Though mom died fifteen years ago, it felt like losing her all over again in a strange way.
American society isn’t good at grieving. It’s considered an indulgence, not a necessity.
Domino, that might be the case, but at the same time, American society is too good at grieving. It’s sort of performance art.
Public grief reminds me a bit of “thoughts and prayers.” It is a convenient substitute for substantive action.
Betty Windsor was born 2 days after my mom & died 7 years after my mom.
Like David Brinkley I don’t mourn BW any more than any other person who died after a long & full life & whom I did not know well.