This Side of the Pond

Last week, we said our final goodbye to a woman who has been a constant presence throughout most of our lives – whether you come from the UK or not.

Until that moment, I couldn’t have told you what it means to have a queen. Not really.

I couldn’t have explained it because I have never known what it’s like not to have one.

Until now.

I could wax lyrical about the good things Queen Elizabeth II has done for this world, and for her people. The “soft” power she wielded in the best way possible: by doing anything and everything she could to bring people together, at home and across the world.

I could talk about the Commonwealth, her pride and joy, a group of 53 countries that have formed strong enough ties to not only remain together after her death, but to have voted King Charles as their next head rather than invent a new system of rotating leadership.

She took a crumbling empire upon which the sun once never set – and which was, let’s just say, fairer to some of its people than others – and forged a global community, mending relationships as she went.

I could talk about her steadfast nature and the vow she took over 70 years ago to serve her people every day of her life. I could point out that she never once broke that promise and continued to do her duty almost until the day of her death.

I could mention the 21,000 engagements that she personally undertook on behalf of the UK, or the 117 countries she visited and the million miles she traveled. The 15 prime ministers she invited to form a government, the 13 U.S. Presidents she met with or the three hours of each day she spent reading the state documents within her “red box” to maintain her deep and precise knowledge of what was going on in her realm.

But none of that really explains what she meant to us, her subjects.

She was the best of us, in every possible way. She exemplified all the qualities we Brits would like to believe describe us, from our stiff upper lips to our innate sense of duty.

She was mother and grandmother – the place where the buck stopped. Government getting out of hand? Prime minister spending all the tax money on curtains for his apartment again? Not to worry, the Queen will sort it out.

She was the constant around which our lives revolved. Not consciously, of course, but that was rather the point: you never really thought that much about having a monarch, she was just always there in the background, continuing those duties with an unfaltering smile.

Until she wasn’t.

To understand how deeply we felt the loss of the only monarch most of us have ever known, one need only look at perhaps the most amazing display of Britishness I have ever seen. A mundane act elevated not only by the circumstances, but by the life it took on of its own.

I refer, of course, to The Queue.

To the quarter of a million people who stood in line to pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II as she lay in state in Westminster Hall.

A line that had been designed for years as part of Operation London Bridge, the intricate and frankly enormous plan of action that would be immediately put into action upon her death.

From the moment it opened, her subjects began to arrive in their droves. Hour by hour it grew longer, and still they kept coming.

Within the first day, it was already 2.2 miles long. That’s an hour’s walk even at a good speed, and it certainly wasn’t moving at anything resembling a clip.

When you joined The Queue, you were given a wristband. From that moment, you were not allowed to leave The Queue, although portapotties and water stations were placed along its route.

The Queue wound alongside the River Thames throughout the whole of central London. You could not sit or nap or even lounge in The Queue, because it never stopped its slow progress.

Businesses stayed open, offering the use of their bathrooms, and apparently some of the neighbors came outside their houses with a table and kettle to hand out cups of tea as people shuffled past.

The Queue had its own YouTube channel, informing of length and wait time and also the current location of its end. To actually join The Queue, you needed to be fully informed about The Queue.

There was live coverage on the news, there was a Twitter feed, there was a full suite of social media. It now has its own Wikipedia page. All of this for the chance to spend a single minute in a room with the Queen, to say your goodbyes.

Famous people turned up in The Queue, including soccer superstar David Beckham. Already a British icon (and, incidentally, a friend to several royals), he won the permanent love of the public when he was asked why he didn’t use his status to skip The Queue: his grandfather would have been disappointed in him, he said.

The Queue had a maximum length of ten miles and a maximum wait time of 24 hours. The idea of deliberately joining The Queue seemed laughable, but still they came.

They came until The Queue was forced to close itself to new arrivals, and the whole of Southwark Park became a waiting pen for the overflow. Soon enough, there was a queue for The Queue. Had The Queue not closed in time for the funeral, I’d warrant people would still be joining it now.

I heard it said that The Queue was a microcosm of the same qualities that described the Queen’s reign: stoic, uncomplaining, self-sacrificing and very, very long.

I wondered for days whether I would have joined The Queue, had I been in London; by the weekend, I felt a strange sense of panic, as though my chance would soon be lost. I eventually concluded that I would indeed have endured The Queue, and I would have bellyached about it for months afterwards; when I informed my husband of this conclusion, he closed his eyes and nodded as though I’d said the most obvious thing in the world.

Why did they come? Probably because, had the situation been reversed, we know she would have done the same for us.

Rest in peace, Your Majesty. And thank you – for everything.