Thursday, June 30, 2011

Princess

Perhaps it's because Snow White was poisoned and came back to life with true love's first kiss....

Same with Sleeping Beauty and that crazy spinning wheel....

Maybe that's why we expect our Princesses to come back to life.

And wouldn't that be nice.

Maybe this whole thing upsets me because this is week when we process our own 'what could have been' and 'what should have been', the loss of our own 'happily ever after'....the week when we lost Jack.

But I find this whole
Newsweek 'What Princess Diana's Life Might Look Like Now', to be quite offensive.

I first heard about this on NPR; early Monday morning while still hitting the snooze button. They were featuring an interview with the author who wrote about what Princess Diana's life would be at 50...if she were still alive. "Diana would have had botox! She would tweet! She would have had an i-phone!"

This is NPR? This is news? Who the heck cares?

And then I saw the cover of Newsweek and I was shocked. There she was; how she would have been at 50, a picture of Diana walking with Kate Middleton, smiling casually, glancing coyly at the camera, her face weathered a bit with age.....

I thought of her sons and how shocked I was by this picture


I thought about how I would feel if someone modified a photo of Samantha to show her 15 years later; graduating from high school, going to prom.

And I thought about how far the media might go to gain attention.

Because, I hate to point out the obvious, but Princess Diana is dead. She will not come back to life. She will not have botox. She will not tweet. She will not stroll casually in the street with her daughter-in-law. The story Newsweek created is a silly fairy tale and those who loved her know this, they know this everyday.

On a week when our own family remembers, we realize that part of moving on is to grieve, to remember where we were six years ago but also to be, to live, to take care of each other and to celebrate how we have progressed further.

Because in the real world, true love's kiss cannot always make things right, mice do not talk, birds' do not sew dresses and we do not always live happily ever after....no matter how badly we want to or how much we can do with Photoshop.

And really, really, really Newsweek......don't we have more important things to focus on; perhaps the living, the economy, the middle east, the environment?

If I wanted to see Elvis, I would have picked up the Enquirer.

2 comments:

Deana said...

We will remember her as her perfect little self. Practically perfect in every way.

ferfischer said...

First of all - regarding the Newsweek article - just WOW. It's times like these that I am glad I'm a hermit. Second - thinking of you and Jack and Samantha a lot lately. Hugs!

Trauma should be the hall pass to life's other issues. Someone should tell the hall monitor

I posted something cryptic on Facebook Saturday. It caught a lot of attention from my tribe but it really wasn’t a big deal…. nothing ...