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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Good Morning,

The first hint I had of the tragedy was when the children, who were five and two at the time, called out ‘This isn’t the Teletubbies.’ All the main British channels had switched to focus on the shocking death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in that terrible car crash in Paris twenty-five years ago today.

Though her life included palpable sorrow and despair, she communicated kindness and hope. When she opened the UK’s first specialised HIV unit, she famously shook the hands with an Aids patient without wearing gloves, showing the world the primacy of knowledge and compassion over ignorance and fear.

She became the Royal Patron of Centrepoint, caring for the homeless, whom she would visit quietly at night bringing gifts of necessities.

In the pain and complexity of their grief, the Royal Family weren’t granted what every bereaved person needs, protection from the public gaze and the ceaseless, often merciless, speculation.

The death of Princess Diana quickly grew into a mass public grief, a collective outpouring in which millions also relived their own pain and losses.

Time sifts memory, changing and refining the narrative. What do we and should we remember about our loved ones and icons a quarter of a century on? Hopefully not the hurts or controversies, from which few lives, public or private, are free; but the very best of the person, the inspiration they gave, the acts of kindness which reached the heart.

In Jewish tradition one adds a phrase after the names of people who’ve died ‘May their memory be for a blessing.’

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