During homeschool yesterday, I explained to my sons that Queen Elizabeth, the Queen of England, had died, and fielded their subsequent questions.
How did she die? This question belies the concern the boys have about whether she suffered from sickness like their grandfather, or whether she was assassinated like the Japanese former prime minister Shinzo Abe was in July. I hate that they already have a repository of death knowledge from which to draw.
I observe how there is a comfort, a relief to knowing that a person died of “natural causes.” It’s a plank across a gaping hole; we can cross over into emotional response without being swallowed up by the anguish of unanswered questions about their state of mind or state of body at the time of death.
We have a friend—had a friend—who was found no longer alive in her house around this time last year. Just…gone. Too young for natural causes. I think about her last moments:
was she afraid
did she know she was dying
did she wish someone were with her
did she suffer
how
how
how did this happen
how is she gone
There’s still a text thread on my phone that I can’t get rid of because it’s what I have left. “Are you well?” is the last text in the thread. Unanswered and answered.
How a person dies tends to be like this; unanswered and answered. No matter what we know, their absence is a chasm that can’t be crossed.
Are the people of England free now? This was their attempt to determine whether the queen’s death was a “good” and liberative thing. Death is not a good thing, I reminded the boys. Ever.
Monarchy is treated with suspicion in my household, based on what we’ve read so far. We are reading psalms after dinner and regularly contemplate whether David wrote each one before or after he was king, because of whom he views as enemies and whom he views as blameless.
We read the book of Exodus earlier this year, and pharaoh was a potent example of unchecked power leading to greed and genocide. We talked about the good lies of Shiphrah and Puah. As we read, we talked about the difference between what is legal (throwing Hebrew boys in the Nile) versus what is just (birth, life, liberation)—and how we can observe that difference now, in our own country. We talked about the way pharaoh’s leadership not only violently oppressed the Hebrew people, but also kept captive the Egyptian people, who were visited with plagues and death because of the decisions of their king (Exodus 9:20 lets us know that there were officials who feared the Lord).
Was she queen of just England? We like to look at the currency of different countries that we’ve been to. I’ve shown them bills and coins from Canada and Jamaica. They know that my parents, from Jamaica, and my husband’s parents, from Australia and Canada, are all under the British Commonwealth, or were at one point. Elizabeth’s face is still on the currency, which is a strong symbol of wealth and power; to whom the resources belong.
I let the boys know that Britain had a parliamentary system of government—still referred to as “his (or her) majesty’s government”—and that in this system, the monarchy served a more symbolic purpose.
For so many of us around the world—so many of us!—the symbol stands for invasion, domination, exploitation, and oppression. I can’t say it better than Ama Ata Aidoo. (I encourage you to watch this now.)
There are some who demand that we, the subjected and the descendants of the subjected, keep silent about systemic destruction, degradation, oppression because it’s not a good time. I believe that they are doing the work of empire with such a demand. Some bodies are more sacred to them. It seems, the human, environmental, and resource costs, for centuries, of lands that were colonized, are weighed against a romantic mythology and politeness, and found less valuable.
As a college student, I told the boys, I visited the British Museum and saw mummies kept under glass. I wondered if the British would want the corpses of their deceased to be displayed like objects and gawked by tourists under glass a thousand miles away. Empire dictates that some bodies are sacred, and others are fit for usury.
We talked about the diamonds in the Queen’s crown—how the largest one comes from South Africa, even though it’s named after a European. How they call the diamond a gift (along with so many other jewels from colonized lands), though it was coerced. We previously talked about the scene in Black Panther with Killmonger asking the museum guide how they acquired masks from countries like Gabon and Benin and Nigeria—did they pay a fair price, or did they just take them?
In the book of Exodus, before the Israelites exited Egypt, the Egyptians heaped valuables in their arms. There was repair along with emancipation. In the gospels, when Jesus challenged the rich young ruler to sell his possessions and donate the proceeds, he went away sorrowful rather than liquidate his wealth. He preferred to make an opulent bed of sadness. Imagine the good news, the repair that the queen could have ushered in by returning jewels, relics, and bodies back to the lands from which they were stolen? Instead, a palace of opulence and feigned powerlessness.
The scandal of the gospel is that it flattens the value of the powerful and raises the value of the powerless. It exalts the people who were forced to work in the diamond mines, never to see a dime of profit from their colonized lands, and it pulls down the wearer of the crown. I am just singing a remix of Mary’s Magnificat. Now is always the acceptable time for this Good News.
I reminded my boys, but mostly myself, that a person’s life is nuanced and varied, and full of responsibility and choice. As believers, we strive to honor the inherent value of people. Queen Elizabeth was an image-bearer, a person beloved by her people and by her maker. Also: to whom much is given, much is required. Among other things, a person’s death is an occasion for evaluation by the living. Now is precisely the time to talk about the legacy for which Queen Elizabeth was a figurehead.
Thank you for giving me things to think about that I haven't read elsewhere. I am thankful for your wisdom.