I haven’t done as well keeping up with my author blog as I would like over the last few years. With everything happening around us since 2020, the past couple of years have been a challenge, and I’m no exception despite getting off easier than many.

I’m working more than I’d like to for ideal work/life balance, mostly because I struggle to say no like so many others working in health care, and I have had to prioritize where I put my energy.

But with the upcoming funeral for Queen Elizabeth II tomorrow, and all of the various opinions, I’m motivated to rectify that situation today.

The queen has been part of my life since I was a child. I don’t remember a time I didn’t know who she was, what with her face on all our money, and singing God save the Queen at school in the mornings as we did in elementary school in Canada in the 1980s.

My grandmother always spoke about how they were the same age, which placed her into a sort of “distant relative” category in my head. Another older, wiser woman who made decisions, (like everyone else) did for me as a child. Not good, not bad, it was just how it was.

As I grew up, I learned no one was infallible. I learned to question my elders as I learned more, to notice the errors in their thinking or knowledge base as I read voraciously and took classes on history and medicine and world events.

I began to understand how we are all a product of our upbringings. I learned some of our ideas were amenable to change, while others seemed to become fixed parts of our personality and identity.

I am Canadian, and part of that means I am a part of the British commonwealth as well. We learned in history class how Canada was colonized, but nearly always from the perspective of the colonizer.

Many of my ancestors came from Scotland, and while they may have been offered the choice between a new land and poverty, there was a choice— and I believe it was one they made (mostly) voluntarily.

As such, our family legends are rich with stories of hard work and success being almost one and the same.

We learned if you work hard, eventually there will be a pot of gold at the rainbow, even if that pot of gold is just a safe place to lay your head and raise your children. And that was okay, because isn’t that what everybody really wants?

Safety, security, and love?

And now the second Elizabethan age is over, and we have King Charles on the throne for the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth.

Still, colonization scars run deep, bringing the validity of the monarchy into question for many, and making old wounds bleed anew for others.

For others, the scars of colonization have not yet healed, and it is more fresh salt to make them burn to see all the outpouring over the Queen.

For some, tomorrow will be a holiday, to allow them to watch the funeral procession and pay their respects. For many others, it is also a day of deep grief for ways of life uprooted, destroyed, and cast aside in favor of what the empire felt best.

In many ways, I think, the world is in shock from the way the 2020s are going. With COVID, riots, and floods, to name only a few things, the death of a woman who lived a rich, long life by any standards passing away seems a little…unimportant.

And especially in comparison to all the other things happening, it doesn’t seem fair, really, to focus on the death of one elderly woman when so many more are hurting and dying each day. After all, we all die, and at 96, it is hardly a surprise it was her time.

But regardless of how one feels about Queen Elizabeth II passing away, it does mark the end of an era.

And so today, I recognize those who grieve the loss of a woman, a grandmother, and mother.

For those who feel nothing, I understand.

And for those who feel rage and grief beyond measure at the unfairness of the world, I will do my best to understand, because I truly cannot.

I am too lucky in my circumstances. While I have lost people I love, I have never personally felt the injustices of the British Empire, so I simply can not begin to understand the depth of how you feel.

However you feel on September 19th, whatever you chose to do, that is your right and I see you.

I will be at work, and I will take a moment to remember my own grandmother that day, and think of Queen Elizabeth II. And I know I will shed a few tears for another life lost, who mattered to someone who will miss them for as long as they live.