PRINCESS DIANA

What? You think it's queer that I am engaging in a tribute to Diana? You think it's silly that a grown woman with a family and career should be wrapped up in the life and end of a celebrity? A princess no less?
Well, let me tell you something. I can't help it. Think about it. I was 11 years old when she came on the scene. You try and tell an 11 year old girl not to be interested in a real princess.
I can remember sitting at the table on the porch when my mother told me about her, having come across her picture in a magazine - the one where she's at work with the Kindergartners and the sun is shining through her white dress - no slip. Ooops. I can remember that my mother told me she was probably going to marry a Prince. A real one. She would become a Princess. A real one. It was hard to fathom that there were real princes and princesses. I had never really seen one, or heard of one. She was basically an ordinary girl - about to become a REAL PRINCESS.
As the years went by and I grew into an adult myself, I tried not to pay attention. I tried to shake off any interest in this princess and her life and struggles and broken fairy tale. But I watched. I couldn't help it. Quietly, I watched, along with the rest of the world as she had babies, become depressed, struggled with an eating disorder as many of my colleagues at college had done. I quietly watched as she seperated, divorced and finally became Diana, not a princess, but a mother, woman and role model. I watched. I tried not to admit it; staring at the magazine covers in the store check-out displays, wanting to buy them all and indulge myself in the incredibale story that it all was. But, I almost always resisted.



The night of the accident I was at my Grandfather's house, visiting with my uncle and my mother. It was getting late and we had just finished up a board game. Jake, still an infant, was asleep in the other room. It came on the news that Diana had been in a wreck, but she had only, reportedly, broken her arm. Phew.
By the time we left, an hour or so later, the news was far more grim. She was not only hurt, but critical and Prince Charles was on his way to see her. Still, it wasn't possible that was going to die. Just not possible. People that are larger than life don't just die suddenly, leaving so much undone.
By the time we got home, she had died. I had walked in the house when we got home and put Jake up in his crib. AJ had the news on when I got downstairs and whispered the news. As if he knew that saying it outloud would make it too real.
It was a terribly sad time.
The generation before us had the Kennedy death. Children left suddenly without a father, a wife subjected to public life alone. This was that death of our generation. Those boys left without their mother - a mother who spent her entire adult life trying to keep their childhood just that - a childhood. It was very sad.
And the funeral.

But why? Why did any of us care? Because she was who she was. Not because she was a princess, not because she was royal, not because her life was the most public of any figure in history, not because she was divorced or because she was pretty and had nice clothes. It's because she was who she was. She was solid, real, like us. But, she was better than most of us too. She was unafraid to keep stepping forward, she was able to turn a bitter and convoluted life into one unmatched by most. Working tirelessly and humanely for charity, bringing hope to millions. Now, you're right, I sound queer. But can you argue with any of it? I don't think so. She never forgot who she was, her priorities, what she thought was right. She worked for it, fought for it, suffered for it and got it. How many of us can say we'd have done as well.

I still stare at the magazine covers. I still yearn to buy the big thick Diana Tributes, the Journals of a Princess. But I don't. I'll wait till one of her boys finds his own princess, and then I'll dive in with both eyes open and share in the life and times of the new princess with my own daughter. Living through her youth, as always.