A Princess, a Friend, a Mother and a Father

Princess Diana called her sons from Paris shortly before she was killed in an automobile accident. Both of the boys cut the call short – they were eager to get back to whatever it was they were doing before she called.  The regret haunts them still. William and Harry share these thoughts in the new HBO documentary, “Diana, Our Mother,” they produced to honor their mother at the 20^th anniversary of her death.

Paul asks the Romans and us: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Friends, relatives, colleagues die. And mourning leaves its bitter taste in our mouths.  When I got home from choir practice in early 1972, my husband told me that Helen, one of my dearest friends, had died. She was 21. It was years before I could talk about her without crying.  And Mother and Daddy – each of their deaths bringing their own grief and sorrow.

Again, Paul asks: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Sometimes we wonder. Events occur in our lives that blast into our inner selves and cause us to wonder if this is it – if this is the thing that will inevitably, in the end, be so big, that the perceived gulf between us and God will be so great, that God and we won’t be able to reach each other anymore.  But Paul goes on to answer his own question and ours, and he answers them emphatically: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  And he continues: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 Prince William says that he felt his mother Diana’s presence with him on the day of his wedding to Kate Middleton.  Prince Harry continues her work to eradicate land mines from the earth.

We celebrate our friends, relatives and colleagues at the time of their funerals, when we talk about them, tell stories about them and laugh at shared memories of times spent with them.

My friend Helen’s brother John visited me a few years ago; her extraordinary blue eyes shone through his extraordinary blue eyes, and she was present with us.

My niece has always loved to put a great deal of thought into what to wear and likes to present herself to the world in a put together sort of way.  My sister-in-law wondered and wondered where that trait came from; how her daughter came to care about such things.  Finally, she figured out that her child inherited that predilection from her grandmother, my mother. One fun way in which Mother lives on in this younger version.

And at times, I look at my brother’s face, and it takes my breath away, as it seems as if I’m looking directly at the face of our dad.

And we remember, again and again, that Paul is right: that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now or ever.