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Princess
Diana - Eulogy.
By Lord
Earl Spencer
I stand before
you today the representative
of a family in grief,
in a
country in mourning before a world in shock.
We are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana
but rather in our need to do so. For such was her extraordinary appeal
that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all
over the world via television and radio who never actually met her,
feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of
Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana than I can
ever hope to offer her today.
Diana was the
very essence of compassion, of
duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of
selfless humanity. All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights
of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended
nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who
proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to
generate her particular brand of magic.
Today is our
chance to say thank you for the
way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a
life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so
young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all.
Only now that you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now
without and we want you to know that life without you is very, very
difficult.
We have all
despaired at our loss over the
past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your
years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.
There is a
temptation to rush to canonise
your memory, there is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a
human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint.
Indeed to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of
your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh
that bent you double.
Your joy for
life transmitted where ever you
took your smile and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes. Your
boundless energy which you could barely contain.
But your
greatest gift was your intuition
and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpinned all your
other wonderful attributes and if we look to analyse what it was about
you that had such a wide appeal we find it in your instinctive feel for
what was really important in all our lives.
Without your
God-given sensitivity we would
be immersed in greater ignorance at the anguish of Aids and HIV
sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the
random destruction of landmines.
Diana explained
to me once that it was her
innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to
connect with her constituency of the rejected.
And here we come
to another truth about her.
For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained
throughout a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her
desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep
feelings of unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a
symptom.
The world sensed
this part of her character
and cherished her for her vulnerability whilst admiring her for her
honesty.
The last time I
saw Diana was on July 1, her
birthday in London, when typically she was not taking time to celebrate
her special day with friends but was guest of honour at a special
charity fundraising evening. She sparkled of course, but I would rather
cherish the days I spent with her in March when she came to visit me
and my children in our home in South Africa. I am proud of the fact
apart from when she was on display meeting President Mandela we managed
to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single
picture of her - that meant a lot to her.
These were days
I will always treasure. It
was as if we had been transported back to our childhood when we spent
such an enormous amount of time together - the two youngest in the
family.
Fundamentally
she had not changed at all
from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school
and endured those long train journeys between our parents' homes with
me at weekends.
It is a tribute
to her level-headedness and
strength that despite the most bizarre-like life imaginable after her
childhood, she remained intact, true to herself.
There is no
doubt that she was looking for a
new direction in her life at this time. She talked endlessly of getting
away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at
the hands of the newspapers. I don't think she ever understood why her
genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there
appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It
is baffling.
My own and only
explanation is that genuine
goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral
spectrum. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about
Diana, perhaps the greatest was this - a girl given the name of the
ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of
the modern age.
She would want
us today to pledge ourselves
to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate
and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to
suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.
And beyond that,
on behalf of your mother
and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to
continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two
exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by
duty and tradition but can sing openly as you planned.
We fully respect
the heritage into which
they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in
their royal role but we, like you, recognise the need for them to
experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them
spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have
expected nothing less from us.
William and
Harry, we all cared desperately
for you today. We are all chewed up with the sadness at the loss of a
woman who was not even our mother. How great your suffering is, we
cannot even imagine.
I would like to
end by thanking God for the
small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time. For taking Diana
at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private
life. Above all we give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to
be able to call my sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary
and irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will
never be extinguished from our minds.
EARL
SPENCER
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