Princess Diana

There are things I always cry at the drop of a hat for: reading "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein, watching The Shawshank Redemption, thinking about my mother not being around anymore, and watching any Princess Diana show.

And now ten years have gone by since she was killed in that Paris tunnel. I remember talking to someone on the phone and Saturday Night Live was on at the time...I glanced at the television a couple times thinking to myself "Geez, this is a really tacky skit they are doing". Then realizing it wasn't one after changing the channel...and telling my friend in disbelief what I...and the world had just been informed of...that Princess Diana had just been involved in a motor vehicle accident and, her diagnosis on screen going from "some broken bones" to "with internal injuries" to "we are saddened to report, Diana, the former Princess of Wales..."

That seems like ages ago and at the same time, it seems like only yesterday. You see, perhaps it sticks with me so much because I, like many others, woke up early to watch her wedding, live, on television. I watched her with her children, I watched her lithe figure dancing away in some magnificent ballroom...and later sitting alone outside the Taj Mahal...her "idyllic" fairytale life brought to real light with that look of total isolation and unhappiness on her face which no one could dispute...it was...over.

But, what seemed like the end of one life transformed itself into one with more purpose: Diana, the champion of people without a voice. She would be the voice for them...she would use her notoriety not to sell perfume or dog clothes...but to speak out for causes such as land mines, hunger and AIDS...and touched not only the hands of those who were shunned...but also their hearts. Touched countless hearts. With her every step she knew the cameras would follow...and she walked right into places no royal had done before (oh, make that ex-royal, she was, of course stripped of her title upon divorce)...heck, she walked into places MOST people wouldn't dare step.

There is a line in a song (Post World War II Blues) from Al Stewart (whose music I loved growing up) which goes "...I can still remember the last time I cried...The day that Buddy Holly died...I never met him, so it may seem strange...Don't some people just affect you that way..." and that about sums up my feelings for Princess Diana...

...some people DO just affect you that way.