It will be the last time we say goodbye to her. More than her.
We say goodbye to the royalty of love. Of love married and dutiful for over 60 years. Of children who were disappointments and did their own damage, as in many respects we all do, and we can but bury our own disappointment with her. But like most mothers, whether we disappoint or not, she showed nothing but care and calm. Queen Elizabeth through piety and devotion turned her love into that of a quiet, beneficent god. We have now few marriages, fewer that last, and indeed are defined less by marriage than by Hinge, Bumble, Cupid and Grindr. That’s how far we are now. Queen Elizabeth contained for us ideals about love and certainty and emotional resilience that we perhaps have never known. That era is dead now and we are the poorer. We can only be comforted by endless re-runs of Bridgerton, Downton Abbey and The Crown for just a sweet sighing simulacra of such certainty.
If the burial of every mother were more like this, the world would stand upright.
We say goodbye to a last living link to World War 2; the rage of the twentieth century and our active organised resistance to fascism. She represented our common fight in which everyone did service in their own way. Every ANZAC Day now stands a little emptier, its grief a measured distance further with her gone.
We say goodbye to a scale of ceremony that we used to know and love. We are unlikely to see its kind again. New Zealand used to do ceremony with the visit of the Earl Mountbatten, of the QE2 led by the Naval Reserve Otago up Otago Harbour, the royal tours we would pack the streets in serried ranks for a glimpse in our hundred thousand. Arches were carved in stone, foundations laid, streets and towns and all manner of things brought to a higher standard just so she could pass by. All the jewels we will see in the next days, sceptres, plumed hats and gold embroidered jackets will soon be put away. Each jewel a history, every silver rod a purpose. This monarchy now shrinks into something less regal. In millennia ahead when an archaeologist opens England’s entombed treasures, they will struggle to recover this great high dam of meaning which is all contained in the one moment we have now.
We say goodbye to England. Most of us come from the UK, nearly all Maori have UK family affiliations. It’s being waved goodbye. Covid accelerated our emotional removal from this Old World. Europe says goodbye to the UK itself. This is the only moment we have to recapture and revive history of this kind, then box it with a ribbon of grief, and start to learn our own in earnest. Whatever bind together the Queen sustained, it too is being buried. Finally the editions of Town and Country and Tatler on the stands contain no signals of desire, only pictorials as unnamably odd and cold as sets out of The Remains of the Day.
We say goodbye to honour, duty, and altruistic service when we say goodbye to this Queen. These are stoic virtues often required of mothers, of military officers, and of public servants. The Queen was of a time where the Queen was able to remain elevated as a beneficent conferral of blessing upon a binding social contract between state and citizen defined precisely by honour, duty and altruistic service. Will ever such nobility of service remain? Yes, in birthday honours, thankfully, and in volunteer service otherwise unrecognised by the million. But no such social contract remains now. Few mothers can afford such stoicism and duty now. Military service is just another career and people move as they do elsewhere. Public sector life is frankly chaotic and unstable and near identical to commercial life. Deserving or otherwise, the Queen was a statue devoted to the worship of the noble and the good. It’s gone.
So on that day of remembrance as they lower her down, bury deep inside yourself all that same nobility, stoicism, and endurance.
Wonder at our loss.
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