Always Elizabeth

Every so often, we like to joke about famous figures who seem eternal. It used to be George Burns. Then Betty White. And of course, there’s Keith Richards, who looks about 3,000 years old despite an actual age that’s closer to 750.

And then there’s the Queen. Or there was.

After her recent passing, a friend pointed out that most of us had never known a world that didn’t have Queen Elizabeth II in it. Granted, that could be said about almost anyone from the ever-smaller World War II generation. But with a presence as well-known as hers, it was a little like learning that the Big Ben clock tower had suddenly vanished. Distant and faraway, with no real impact on my day-to-day life, and yet somehow … one more constant that was gone.

I wonder what Grandma Elsie and Granddad Bill would have said.

My grandparents, like my wife’s grandmother, were English. Elsie and Bill came to this country in 1957, when QE2 was still very new indeed. Granddad had even seen her close up as a young girl in the 1930s during his brief tenure in the Grenadier Guards – yes, the guys with those wonderful hats. The Guards liked little Elizabeth,  Grandma once told me, but her little sister Margaret was much more mischievous, dashing past soldiers she had already walked by to make them jump back to attention. Kids will be kids, even when they’re royalty.

It’s probably Grandma’s occasional royal-watching that sparked my own here-and-there awareness of the Windsors. And through all the family drama – and my, was there a lot of it – the familiar face aged and endured. Always with that familiar stern dignity and a Corgi close to hand.

In that regard, losing her was a little like losing Grandma all over again.  

The stoicism was easy to tease, of course. “The Naked Gun” portrayed Queen Elizabeth at a ballgame, passing refreshments and doing The Wave with aplomb. The Olympics depicted her skydiving with James Bond, while her own jubilee put her at tea with a well-meaning Paddington Bear. But the joke always had a bit of respect in it, maybe even some envy at the ability to stay unruffled in the most unexpected situations.

None of us have the wealth or the staff or the seemingly endless hat collection of an English queen, of course. But the patience … that’s something more achievable. And something we seem to need more of every day.

Elizabeth took her throne in a nation still recovering from the strains of war. Our own time seems to be forever in the midst of it. I won’t run the roll call of disasters; it’s too familiar and too depressing.  But as each new crisis arrives – whether personal or international – the pressure on each of us pulls just a little tighter.

But we continue. We have to. Perhaps looking back at what we’ve survived, perhaps looking forward to what may come. But always looking to each other as we meet the moment now, with whatever hope we can find to push back the night.

That, too, has remained changeless over 70 years.

“Today we need a special kind of courage,” the queen said early in her reign. “Not the kind needed in battle, but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics, so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.”

That spirit, more than any crown or monument, is a legacy to be treasured. And shared.

Farewell, Your Majesty. And thank you.

And don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on Keith.

A Last Flight

Sharpie’s initial startled burst of activity had worn off. Now our yellow-and-green parakeet sat gently in Heather’s grasp, occasionally flexing her wings or tightening her talons against my wife’s shirt.

“Shhh,” Heather breathed as she ran her finger gently over the feathers of Sharpie’s head, over and over again.

Sharpie’s eyes slowly eased shut. They opened, closed, opened again, confusion and fear giving way to trust.

“Shhh.”

The eyes closed one more time.

Heather waited, then looked up at me, holding her while she held the bird.

“I think she’s gone,” Heather whispered. “I can’t feel her heartbeat anymore.”

After 11 years of company, Sharpie had flown.

Losing any animal that you love and care for is never easy. With  Sharpie, it was like the end of an era. Of our many Colorado birds, she was the only one that we picked out ourselves, the only one that was not a gift from a friend. Just two months after we returned to the state in 2007, we had gone in search of a parakeet; Heather, one of life’s “bird ladies,” had pointed at a small one that had caught her eye out of the small flock in the store.

As the attendant reached in, another bird jumped in the way and was picked up instead. She was the same color – and kinda gutsy – so Heather took the volunteer. We named her Sharpie, since her yellow was the color of a highlighter, and took her home.

Starting with a hand, ending with a hand.

Sharpie was there as I changed jobs, as we changed homes, as we saw others come and go. The dean of the flock, not as loud as some, but adding her voice to the mix when others piped up (including the occasional playful whistling human).She was a theme, a constant.

Nothing in life stays constant, though.

We knew she was getting old. She had been looking ruffled as birds do, though the last few days had been something of a rally. And then, on Thursday morning, I came down to feed the birds and saw her struggling on the bottom of the cage, unable to fly, trying to climb to her perch.

I got Heather out of bed. She got Sharpie out of her cage. And together, as Sharpie quietly left the world,  we said goodbye.

Goodbye. It’s a powerful word. We don’t always get the moment. But sometimes it feels like the word echoes from every corner.

It was at this time last year that our 21-year-old cousin Melanie died in bed while staying with us. A lover of animals who wanted to be a vet tech, I think she would have appreciated sharing her time with a veteran pet.

It’s the same week that held the anniversary of Mel’s dad. The passing of Heather’s great aunt. The same month that held so many more.

We all get a lot of lessons in saying goodbye. And perhaps the biggest is that “goodbye” is not the same as “letting go” or “moving on.”

You can’t. Not really. If someone has meant enough to you, they’ve replaced pieces of your heart with their own, woven themselves into your life with a brilliant thread. When they’re pulled away, it leaves a gap. And while the sharp edges eventually become duller and the angles become a little more rounded, the hole never truly heals.

In a painful way, that’s a treasure. A sign of how much they were valued.

We do have to say goodbye. For ourselves as much as for the one leaving, maybe more. We have to be able to shape life around the new reality, acknowledge it, take the steps into whatever comes next.

But it doesn’t mean that their presence won’t still be felt. That memories won’t invade at curious times, like a visitor at the door. That something real isn’t still there.

Whether a small bird or a full-grown human, they touched you. Shaped you. Left their fingerprints in your life, mind, and memory.

What is remembered, lives.

Today, as I think about it, that’s especially fitting.

After all, every Sharpie must leave a mark.