I had an interesting chat with our parish priest yesterday. He had come to give my mother Holy Communion as she is bed-bound. Afterwards, he happened to notice that a programme about the Queen was on my mother’s TV, which is fixed the wall of her bedroom. It was showing the funeral procession of her father, the late King George VI, and I remarked that as a young child I remembered a teacher at my primary school being dressed in black and crying at the death of the King.
The parish priest, who is from the Republic of Ireland, was very struck by this: having no concept of monarchy, he wondered that a woman would weep for a monarch, someone she did not know personally. I suggested that perhaps this sorrow for George VI was also in recognition that, very shy and in delicate health, he had followed the call of duty and sacrificed his life for his country.
