The websites are reminding me of a tragic event from 25 years ago, back in 1997: The car accident that took the life of Princess Diana.
I can remember that night for the odd situation for myself. I just couldn't get to sleep that evening.
I remember I had gone to bed early (I was scheduled to work in the morning the next day), but couldn't sleep well. My mind was abuzz (I can barely remember why). So I got up figuring that watching some reruns on a weekend night TV would drive me to boredom enough to sleep then. In-between switching channels I got to CNN and they were already hours into their coverage of the car accident.
I sat there transfixed for about 10-15 minutes before a BREAKING NEWS chyron flashed and the reporter broke the terrible news that she had died in the operating room.
I kept watching a little longer, and my first thoughts were for William and Harry. Gods. They've had to carry this pain for 25 years now.
The response to her death was on a scale I've barely seen before. The closest I could recall was John Lennon's. Countries and cultures that had no ties to Great Britain demonstrated incredible levels of grief. Some of had to do with the fact that she had involved herself in various charities and causes like AIDS treatments and landmine removal. Even in the United States, Princess Di was this glamour/fashion icon, more a celebrity than a (divorced) member of a still-relevant royal family of international prestige. We were a nation that was supposed to renounce titles of nobility or even honor it outside of diplomacy, but Diana's charm and grace made even hardened republicans call her Princess.
In the years since her passing, Diana has become this enigmatic symbol - of the perils of fame, of the pressures of royal duty, of the evils of modern media (the hated paparazzi that literally hounded her to her death), of the broken dynamics of bad marriages, the unattainable and the unforgettable - to where we do not know her as a person, we know her as a metaphor. Which is tragic in its own way, because she left behind two sons who loved her and are haunted by the damage to this day.
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