~ Diana's Funeral Page 3~
~ All remain seated ~ |
~ THE TRIBUTE ~ By ~ The Earl Spencer ~
I stand here today the representitive 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 to 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. A standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very Brittish girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a national 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 to 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 strenth of the message you gave us through your years og 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 mischievious sense of humour with a laugh that bent you double. ~ Your joy of life, transmitted wherever you took your smile and the spakle in those unforgettable eyes; your boundless energy which you could bearly contain. ~ But your greatest gift was your intuition and it was a gift that 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 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 fund-raising 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 that, apart from when she was on display meeting President Mandela, we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazi from getting a single picture of her ~ that meant alot to her. ~ These were days I will always tresure. ~ 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 strengh that, despite the most bizaare-like life imaginable after her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself. ~ There was no doubt 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 recieved 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 permanant 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 oppisite end of te moral spectrum. It is a point to remember tha, 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 reguarly to drive you to tearful dispair. 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 care desperatly 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 ever 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 call my sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplacable Diana, whose beauty, both internal and external will never be extinguished from our minds.
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