The day following the State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II
As I work with images from today’s coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s State Funeral, I will be over the next 24 hours working to prepare images to share, I am at Heathrow now as I had grad class tonight (7:40 EST) which is the early morning hours in London (it’s now 3:37 AM London). Basically, at this point, I have had about 4.5 hours of sleep in the last 72 hours. I will be sharing more with everyone in the coming days, I certainly, will never be able to convey the experience in its fullest capacity as witnessed today, but I hope I will be able to take you through a remarkable experience of just one section of the Queen’s Funeral. Given that the projection is 1 Million people and the reality is 2 million spread from Hyde Park, to Westminster, to the Mall, to Buckingham to Wellington Arch, to the roads leading to Windsor Castle, many images were captured.
But I do know the one image I can only paint for you instead of showing you, is imagine, 100’s or 1000’s of people standing in complete silence for 2 minutes of silence, now take that same image and add it to the entire service when shared on the speakers that lined the Mall, which is the road that leads to Buckingham Palace. Imagine during this same silence, you hear a distant drum beat, and it continues at the same cadence, the same rhythm, then it grows louder and louder until you see the Queen’s Guards appear, and in the center of the entire guard is one drummer, beating one constant beat, pound after pound and silence remains, not even a child crying.
The Precentor’s voice on the speaker and the prayer spoken ever so softly by 100’s of thousands of people resonated down the street, it was then the silence was broken and it was then the pounding of the drum stopped. This would be the exact moment the Queen’s Guard would turn, and minutes later, the pounding of the drum began again, this time, the Queen’s Guard walking back towards Buckingham Palace, this time, each pound of the drum, each step of the Queen’s Guards, marked the last mile of their duty to their Queen. As the pounding of the drum grew stronger and no longer a distant drum, the crowd grew very silent again. Only then would be the sounds of the rhythm of cadence, the clank of the horse hooves of the calvary, and the perfect in-sync steps of 98 soldiers of the Royal Navy pulling the 128-year-old gun carriage carrying Queen Elizabeth’s casket draped in the Royal Standard Flag.
Just imagine the silence of over 1 Million people along the processional route, just imagine for today, in the loss of England’s longest reigning Queen, the World focused on one person, one constant in the world for the last 70 years, most of the World only knew her as, Her Majesty, and though small in stature in life, in her final passage, commanded the attention of the World, and in her own words spoken, resonated to millions around the world today, “Grief is the Price We Pay for Love”.
