Prince Harry Remembers

Been thinking about where I was ten years ago the night that Princess Diana died. I was out with friends in New York City and we had been waiting for a table at Carmine's when we were finally seated for a late dinner. We had spent quite a while in the bar area waiting and watching a tennis tournament on the television. When we finally sat down, I jumped up again to visit the ladies and walked back through the bar area. But the television station had changed from what it had been only moments before. The bar area had also emptied out and there were several women standing in front of one of the television screens, standing stunned, their hands over their mouths. What had happened?

I walked over and joined them in their little circle and looked up at the dark screen. All around me the restaurant was alive with energy and excitement - this was Manhattan, this was the Theatre District, this was a holiday weekend and it was filled with laughter and music and life. But up on the television screens all was dark but for a blinking fuzzy red light in the distance. I couldn't hear the audio, the restaurant was so loud, but I could see the inscription at the bottom of the screen.

Princess Diana killed.

I gasped out loud, standing there with the other women, we were all routed to our spots, unable to move, not seeing anything but the blurry red light. Finally, I found my way to the ladies and it was empty and I stopped and started to weep. Why? Where was this coming from? True, we were born the same year. True, I had gotten up in the wee hours of the morning when I was in college and watched the wedding live on television, I had read magazines with pictures of her dress and the carriage and the kiss on the balcony. I had seen her when I was studying in London my junior year and she made her debut after Prince William was born. She had come to the theatre and we all lined up on the stairwell to watch her arrive, looking radiant and happy at the side of her husband, no idea how unhappy she may have been, even then. And then, when it began to turn, after Prince Harry was born, and all the unhappiness poured out, even as she was bringing a human face to a distant institution, I kept up with her, like a distant relative. A friend said she was like our own football team, we followed her in the good years and in the not-so-good years. She was a champion, a broken one we learned - but then, weren't we all?

But I was shocked by how deeply it hurt, wondered about it, even as the days went by and once again found myself back in front of the television watching the funeral and the boys following so solemnly behind the procession to Westminster Abbey.

So much has been said since then, how imperfect she was - how fragile a life she had behind the radiant smile. She was a far more complicated character then anyone might have guessed, but there was one thing about her that no one has been able to dispute - and that was that she loved those boys.

Now ten years later, the boys honor their mother publicly in a Christian worship service in London. The family is all there, well, almost all of them. And Harry, looking a lot like his uncle who stood up at the service ten years ago, speaks to his family and to the world and helps us to remember. It now seems a long time ago.

It may be that Diana's greatest legacy will be those two young men. For what can be said of two boys who want to live a life that would make their mother proud?