Unless you’ve been on a total media vacation this past month, you’ve most likely read, seen, or heard of Prince Harry’s recently released memoir, Spare. The media blitz of book reviews, podcasts, interviews on Good Morning America and 60 minutes, preceded by a six-part Netflix special, Megan and Harry (now available on everyone’s personal phone and computer screen), demonstrates what every author knows is the royal road to the New York Times Best Seller List and the rarest of all outcomes, blockbuster book sales. Of course, it takes a royal, or a celebrity to garner such attention and Harry came in being both, given who has parents were– heir to the British throne Prince Charles and his then wife, media darling Princess Diana. Harry describes the book and video series as his effort to “own my own story,” given how many others have written and spoken for and about him throughout the 38 years of his life.
The danger of this humongous approach to promoting a book is the risk of over-saturation, where people like my husband said, when he saw me watching yet another interview, “we’ve heard all this.” And once your story is out there in such a gigantic way, the critical voices are amplified way beyond the supportive ones. Reactions to the leaked version and excerpts, according to the Daily Mail were “We’re sick of Prince Harry’s whine tour!” and “experts say it’s the ‘final nail in the coffin’ of his relationship with his family.’”
Communication theorist, Marshall McLuhan warned us that the medium is the message, meaning that the medium through which we choose to communicate holds as much if not more, value than the message. As an author of a memoir myself, Warrior Mother, Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss, and the Rituals that Heal, I envy Harry’s ability to garner attention to his message. But now, as an organizational grief consultant, and grief advocate, I see that the core message of Harry’s story has been totally lost. The reactions garnered, though larger in scale, are not substantially different than those encountered by many, if not most grieving people in the US and England when they are seen as “disloyal” if they express “details of their private emotional turmoil,” inside and outside their own family structures. I consider Harry’s story and the story of the couple, Harry and Megan, as master classes on what I’ve come to call, The Art of Grieving, (the name of my upcoming book.)
“I couldn’t cry.” Harry said. The only time he cried over the loss of his mother Diana in a car accident when he was 12 years old was at her funeral. As a young man he blamed himself and questioned whether he really loved his mother. Later he realized that “all his mother ever wanted was for he and his brother to be happy.” As an adult he attributed this inability to cry to– “I learned too well…the family maxim that crying is not an option.” My friend Pam was not a member of the royal family, but she reported that her mother, the morning of her father’s funeral in Pennsylvania brought she, and her three sisters into the living room and said, “Now, I don’t want to see any tears at this funeral.” My point–we are looking at ourselves.
Harry reported a confusing item in the story of himself as a 12-year-old–the fact that “When I see the videos, my brother and I are smiling and shaking hands with people, and I remember the people’s hands are wet from wiping away their own tears.” As a grief coach I would tell Harry that the community was grieving on his behalf, which is what community members do for the bereaved. Grief is not a solo activity, it is communal. I’ll admit to a bit of confusion myself when, with friends of my generation, living an ocean away but having seen photos and read stories about Diana and Harry and his brother all their lives, we were crying in the living rooms of our own homes. Through the magic of global media, you and your Mum Harry had become part of us.
“I thought Mum was still alive.” Harry and his brothers were aware that their mother was hounded by photographers who made her life at times, a living hell. She died in a car crash in Paris when her driver was trying to get away from them. But what if she didn’t die? Maybe she got away and is hiding somewhere and will come to get her boys when this all blows over. Harry reports living on that hope which postponed for many years his confronting and grieving her loss.
Many people who have lost a close loved one report somehow “forgetting” that they are dead, even though they know they are. Joan Didion, in her book, “The Year of Magical Thinking mentioned, for some time after her husband’s death, she couldn’t give his shoes away. “He might need them when he comes back.” Mary-Francis O’Connor, in her book, The Grieving Brain explains how this can operate. “If a person we love is missing, then our brain assumes they are far away and will be found later.” She uses penguins as an example of the evolutionary advantage of this. If the partner whose job it is to stay on the nest believes that his partner will return, he stays with the young, avoiding catastrophes for them. Mother chimpanzees carry their dead offspring around for days, allowing their brains to recalibrate and catch up with the fact of their loss.
Harry’s story illustrates several, not widely known principles of good grieving. Harry now sees his life as dedicated to changing the system that caused his mother’s death, the media’s intrusive pursuit of photos and a lucrative story, at all costs. This keeping others from the same fate, (especially his own wife) adds to his life purpose and Diana’s legacy and is known as Co-Destiny. The process, first identified by physician Joe Kasper, after he lost his son, encourages parents to view their child’s life, (in Harry’s case, his mother’s life), in a larger perspective so death is not the end of the story. This gives the surviving person’s life a purpose, and the family’s suffering a purpose as well.
Like many people experiencing the loss of a loved one at various ages and stages of life, Harry reports trying some common wrong ways to grieve–distancing and out running his grief through sex, drugs and alcohol. He eventually found comfort and new meaning through a new identity as a soldier. By following his mother’s example, getting involved in meeting the needs of people less fortunate in Africa, he carries on her legacy, and we see an example of another concept, post-traumatic growth.
But most of this is missed since western culture has gone from imitating the elaborate practices of Victorian England where Queen Victoria wore mourning black for 40 years after the death of her beloved Albert, to requiring the silence and stoicism that Harry and Megan have gone against and are being punished for now. In my experience working with bereaving family members, dysfunction in a family after the dead of an important member is way too common. It’s not anticipated, nor its solutions recognized or shared since no one is allowed to talk about grief and its “private emotional turmoil and bitter family resentments.” Painful though it is, since families are only as sick as their secrets, Spare is an attempt, (as my work and others in the bereavement field’s work is), to spare others, and future generations from the unnecessary suffering of the art of grieving having been driven underground.
