Obituary to Diana Princess of Wales speech by the Earl of Spencer
September 9th 1997
September 9th 1997
I stand before you today, the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning, before a world in shock.
We
are all united, not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana,
but rather in our need to do so, because such was her extraordinary
appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service
all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her
feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of
Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana then I can ever hope to offer to her today.
Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was the symbol
of selfless humanity. A standard bearer for the rights of the truly
downtrodden. A very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone
with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last
year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her
particular brand of magic.
Today is our chance to say ‘thank you’ for the way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came at all. Only now you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are without, and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult.
We
have all despaired for our loss over the past week and only the strength
of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us
the strength to move forward.
There is a temptation to rush, to canonize your memory. There is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities, and do not need to be seen as a saint.
There is a temptation to rush, to canonize your memory. There is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities, and do not need to be seen as a saint.
Indeed,
to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your
being—your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh that
bent you double, your joy for life transmitted wherever you took your
smile and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes, your boundless energy
which you could barely contain. But your greatest gift was your
intuition and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what under pinned
all your other wonderful attributes.
And if we look to analyse what
it was about you that had such a wide appeal we find it in your
instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives. Without
your God-given sensitivity, we would be immersed in greater ignorance
at the anguish of Aids and HIV sufferers, the plight of the homeless,
the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of land mines.
Diana
explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering
that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the
rejected. And here we come to another truth about her. For all the
status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very
insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for
others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness
of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom. The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her vulnerability.
The last time I saw Diana was on July 1st, her birthday, in London
when typically she was not taking time to celebrate her special day
with friends but was guest of honour at a fund-raising charity evening.
She sparkled, of course.
But I would rather cherish the days I spent with her in March when she came to visit me and my children at our home
in South Africa. I am proud of the fact that, apart from when she was
on public display meeting President Mandela, we managed to contrive to
stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single picture of her.
That meant a lot to her.
These are days I will always treasure. It
was as if we were transported back to our childhood when we spent such
an enormous amount of time together as the two youngest in the family. Fundamentally
she hadn’t changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a
baby, fought with me at school, who endured those long journeys between
our parents’ home with me at weekends.
It is a tribute to her
level-headedness and strength that despite the most bizarre life after
her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself. There is no doubt she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time. She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. I
don’t think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were
sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on
their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling.
My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. It
is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the
greatest was this: a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of
hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.
She
would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys,
William and Harry, from a similar fate, and I do this here, Diana, on
your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used
regularly to drive you to tearful despair. And beyond that, on behalf of
your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do
all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you were
steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not
simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you
planned.
We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been
born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role.
But we, like you, recognize the need for them to experience as many
different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and
emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing
less from us.
William and Harry, we all care desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with sadness at the loss of a woman who wasn’t even our mother. How great your suffering is we cannot even imagine.
William and Harry, we all care desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with sadness at the loss of a woman who wasn’t even our mother. How great your suffering is we cannot even imagine.
I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he
has shown us at this dreadful time, for taking Diana at her most
beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private life. Above
all, we give thanks for the life of a woman I’m so proud to be able to
call my sister the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and
irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will never
be extinguished from our minds.
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