The passing of the Queen

 Although we knew the Queen was clearly very unwell, her death seemed to be sudden. When I went to bed, I noted that the family were gathering to be with her and that the end of her life was approaching. Maybe at 4 am I woke and checked only to see the article renew and to disclose that the Queen had died.

It's my intention to note my feelings, as part of an overall plan to simply be aware of my internal experience, rather than gloss over it. So, I noted the sadness and sat with it. Very quickly I began to softly weep and eventually I got up and washed my face and blew my nose before I settled back to sleep.

I think seeing her so frail 48 hours ago, still working, still caring, still trying to do her best, and then passing away from this world last night really exposed my heart; certainly not a perfect human, a thing that doesn't exist, but someone who tried and never stopped trying.

As it is for so many thousands of people, the Queen has been a constant in my life. My grandmother was very keen on her and took me to stand amongst the crowds when she came to Melbourne in 1963, and of course magazines had her on the cover regularly throughout my life.

So many families have their share of conflict, and the Queen's family was no exception, and yet there was something particularly poignant about a daughter-in-law creating the most awful rift in the Queen's family at the end of her life. As people who put their duty to country first, all those podcasts and interviews airing dirty laundry, expressing only one side of the discord,  must have felt so ugly and alienating.

I noted too that I kept my sadness this day to myself; came here to express it rather to a person. I noted it as odd that I did that and looked up a book that I use often to see what it said. People who 'caretake' someone do this; keep their emotions to themselves because those who they 'look after' don't like emotional displays. They are the ones who do emotional displays and caretakers are the ones who stay calm.

Still, I am not made of stone but rather a vast cacophony of emotions many of which are experienced privately. This is the training.

As I lay in bed in the middle of the night absorbing the Queen's death, not just as a sense of sadness in my mind but in a somatic way, as a bodily experience, I came across this sense that nothing else truly survives but love. We can feel it, not that hard to do for most of us, but can we be love?

I believe with all my heart that the vast majority of us are doing the best we can - that there are wounds that prevent us quite often from being our best - but given the wounds, doing the best we can.

It's that thought, that acknowledgment of the human experience, that allows the heart to open deeper and tap into an unconditional love - not expecting more of someone than they are capable of being, but loving them anyway.

I wonder, perhaps if only momentarily, the Queen's passing may tenderize our hearts.