Temporary Endings and The Final Beginning
So we come to a very national sort of ending. It鈥檚 one which we all knew would come, and yet somehow felt as though it never really would. 3 or 4 generations of us have known nothing other than periodic jubilee celebrations, or singing 鈥淕od save the Queen鈥 or her face adorning coins and stamps and newspaper articles.
In the hours since the death of Queen Elizabeth tributes have rolled in. Countless words have been spoken, but one thing has stood out. It was there in Boris Johnson鈥檚 words in parliament, that 鈥渨e have perhaps been lulled into thinking that she might be in some way eternal.鈥 It was there as another MP quoted W.H. Auden鈥檚 famous words, 鈥淲e thought that love would last for ever: We were wrong.鈥
Funnily enough, it was the French president, Emmanuel Macron who managed to capture it best:
鈥淪he was one with her nation: she embodied a people, a territory, and a shared will. And stability: above the fluctuations and upheaval of politics, she represented a sense of eternity.鈥
That 鈥渟ense of eternity鈥 is the recurring theme in so many tributes. Objectively speaking, the death of someone at 96鈥攅specially someone as beloved and remarkable as Queen Elizabeth II鈥攊s deeply sad, tragic even. But it won鈥檛 usually be described as a 鈥渟hock.鈥 Yet that seems to be the overwhelming description at the moment. The country is experiencing a 鈥渄eep sense of shock.鈥
Queen Elizabeth was the ever-present ruler. She herself seemed almost unchanging despite the fantastic changes that took place in the UK and in the world throughout her reign.
But, as all things must, that reign has come to an end. And, as so many floral tributes have put it, we can鈥檛 really believe she鈥檚 gone.
Endings pervade everything we do. Every day of our lives comes to an end. The sun sets, the sun rises. We roll from season to season, spring giving way to summer to autumn to winter. Year after year starts and finishes. We watch children around us grow out of their baby-vests, leave toddlerhood behind, take their first faltering steps into primary school, stride into secondary school with as much confidence as they can muster, and then in a blink they鈥檙e adults. And the cycle starts again.
Yes, endings are everywhere. You could argue that they鈥檙e pretty much the most normal thing about our lives.
Yet, we have a strange relationship with them. Sometimes they relieve us. A difficult time recedes into the distance. Others excite us for what inevitably follows. Sometimes they daunt us for exactly the same reasons. And then there are those endings, like this one, which leave us feeling bereft.
The one thing which endings don鈥檛 do is pass unnoticed. But isn鈥檛 that odd? If endings are one of the most normal things about our lives, if they鈥檙e inescapable, then why should we be so surprised by them? To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, our constant surprise at the finality of endings鈥攚hether in relief or sadness鈥攊s rather like a fish being constantly surprised at the wetness of water.
The only conclusion to draw is that endings jar with us because we long for the world to be different. We yearn for reality not to be as it is. And we find hooks onto which those yearnings can be placed. Deep down we know that the story we have been subconsciously telling ourselves is an illusion. We knew that Elizabeth II鈥檚 reign would not simply continue鈥攚e know that the present is not, in fact, eternal. But we insulate ourselves from that truth.
Despite our love of the new and novel, we humans crave stability and permanence, and for 70 years Elizabeth provided that and then some.
This ending has taken us by surprise because it has shown us that she wasn't the place to find that permanence.
There is just one place to really find it; a higher throne.
Perhaps this particular ending reveals that our yearning for what can't be found in this world鈥攅ven in the lengthy reign of an utterly remarkable woman鈥攊s proof enough that we were made for another.
