The Queen is laid to rest

The famous Richard Stone portrait. Click it for the full vid

And I, like countless others around the world, felt myself surprisingly and deeply moved. More that I’d expected. The reason so many queued for 16 hours, for 20 hours, readily, eagerly and willingly, they told us, over and over, was “because she did her duty, never failed, and we felt we had to pay our respects.” They came from all over the world, all ages, all ethnicities, to stand in the longest queue in the world. And then all along the path to Buckingham Palace, to Windor Castle and her final resting place in St George’s Chapel, next to her beloved husband, her sister, and her mother and father. How fitting.

For a lifetime atheist like me, it’s weird to say “lay to rest”, but it seems a mark of respect for her quiet, unassuming faith. I’m happy to do it. The BBC was happy to do it. The BBC, btw, did an absolutely fabulous job throughout the ten days of mourning, and on this day, yesterday, of the funeral service and burial. The main commentator has the most silken voice. And he didn’t over-talk.  

Andrew Sullivan, ex Brit now resident in the US, captures my own feelings best:

Part of the hard-to-explain grief I feel today is related to how staggeringly rare that level of self-restraint is today. Narcissism is everywhere. Every feeling we have is bound to be expressed. Self-revelation, transparency, authenticity — these are our values. The idea that we are firstly humans with duties to others that will require and demand the suppression of our own needs and feelings seems archaic. Elizabeth kept it alive simply by example.

With her death, it’s hard not to fear that so much she exemplified — restraint, duty, grace, reticence, persistence — are disappearing from the world. As long as she was there, they were at the center of an idea of Britishness that helped define the culture at its best. Perhaps the most famous woman in the world, she remained a sphinx, hard to decipher, impossible to label. She was not particularly beautiful or dashing or inspiring. She said nothing surprising. She was simply the Queen. She showed up. She got on with it. She was there. She was always there.

“An Icon, Not An Idol”, Andrew Sullivan.