queen elizabeth.

It has been just one of those weeks – and I am trying to catch myself with work due and whatnot – but I feel that I need to take a moment to remember Queen Elizabeth II in her passing two days ago.

Like so many others, though she was 96, I was still a bit stunned when she passed away – as I suppose I thought she could never die.

She has been the Queen my entire life – and my father’s entire life as well for that matter.

Still, she has gone – and listening to now King Charles’s first ever speech, where he spoke so beautifully of her and then closed tearfully with Shakespeare’s, “may flights of Angels sings thee to thy rest,” just undid me.

We all know she passed some 17 months after the loss of her beloved husband, Prince Phillip, whose death certainly had a profound impact on her last months.

(The image of her seated alone at his funeral due to COVID protocol is still just heart-wrenching.)

It is a comfort to know they are together again.

Now we remember her for her years of service, from a young woman who volunteered for the war effort in World War II, all the way through her 70 year reign, recently celebrated spectacularly throughout Britain, as Queen, seeing the whole world change in ways that she simply could have never imagined when she started her journey.

As she has been memorialized so well and so thoroughly in the media in these past few days, I won’t endeavor to write a detailed account of her life, but rather just to say that I loved her and especially her humor. These clips are fantastic:

Nearest to my heart though, since I have also loved Paddington Bear since I was a child, the skit with him for her Platinum Jubilee is my favorite forever, including the Queen and Paddington leading into “We Will Rock You.”. ❤