But what about those tears? As a working
minister of religion, I often spend time with those who mourn. I know
that many of the tears we shed at funerals are as for the living as for
the dead. "What will we do without dad?", "How will I get
by without Mr X to speak up for me" etc. Some of our tears have
been shed for Diana out of sympathy for a life cut so short, others for
her "blood family", but others for still more selfish reasons.
Some are mourning the end of a new kind of
fairy tale. In this tale the Princess not only got her beautiful gown
and her ticket to the ball, but she went outside to talk to the
paupers on the street as well. She was "our" Princess
because she lived out the fairy tale as we would have written it. Now
she is gone and we must either drop the idea completely or start to
live it out for ourselves. As Elton John has said, we are "lost
without the wings of your compassion". Either our nation will be
compassionless again, or we will have to supply that compassion for
ourselves. Tears have been shed because both seem too costly.
On the way to his own funeral, Jesus told
those who wept for him, "not to weep for me, but weep for
yourselves and your children". Will those children who watched
the Princess' funeral remember it as the beginning ... or the end of
an era? |