It was a blow to hear tonight that the King's health which was considered excellent seems to have taken a turn south.
I was a surprise child. My mother at first thought that her pregnancy was a new symptom of her menopause. She waited a few additional weeks before consulting her doctor. To say that my parents were surprised would be an understatement. My two older siblings had already left home when I was born. I turned 14 two days before we celebrated my father's 75th birthday.
I had just turned 17 when my mother died, two years after my father. I was well prepared for my father's death, my entire conscious life, his health had been poor. I was ready for their death. Between the ages of 16 and 19, when I left for University, I lived with my sister and her two children, who were only a few years younger than me.
Illness forces those who love you, who are at the centre of who you are as a person, to reconsider actions and decisions, to re-unit, to present a common front the the enemy that always wins in the end. Illness redefines priorities fights and plans. Immediately.
My wife and I lived it when I had a mild heart attack in 2012. I was not yet fifty. We had lived a life without thought of our mortality. We have four wonderful children, and we had very lucrative careers. That night, my wife and I were waiting for the test results, me lying on an incredibly uncomfortable hospital gurney and my wife in one of those hardback plastic chairs. For the first time, we spoke of our true desires and our vision of our future. For the first time, we both admitted that while the money was insane, the work was tedious and awful. That night, at 3 am, illness brought us together for the first time ever to consider what we wanted our future to be. Living as a City power couple, was not it. Illness gave us a challenge and an opportunity.
The past four years have been a challenge for the royal family, the heart of our Nation, the definition of who we are and the definition of what it is to be a Briton. The daily lives of Royals like anyone else have their challenges but unlike ours, it is defined under the glare of media.
The King finds himself as a 75-year-old father of two men who have not seen eye to eye for a very long time. The King, as a father, bears all the blame for this breakdown in a relationship that should be profound and unbreakable. Of course, the news now is that the King is handling the illness as an outpatient, but the fact that he called his sons and that Harry will be coming home to see his father, whom he has not spoken to in person for almost two years, is an indication that the King has accepted the challenge of his own mortality and has decided that despite the chasm that exists between him and his youngest son, and between the two of them, that his responsibility as a father trumps all. His challenge is to reunite the family because, in our mortality, family is the only thing.
God save the King
Note: I revied the text a little, I realized that it sounded a little too gloomy. I am actually a very happy felow
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