Flowers for Queen Elizabeth?

Sunflowers signify life, but on the day Queen Elizabeth  passed away they seem sad and sentimental.

I had an odd reaction today when I heard Queen Elizabeth II had died.

There had been plenty of warning, since the morning news shows warned early today that the Queen was in dire straits, that her health was failing and the worst could be expected.

Still, when I went out to photograph on this glorious summer day in Pennsylvania this afternoon, the news that she had passed from the car radio brought out some sentiments and feelings I barely remembered I had.

Elizabeth left the earth today, September 28, 2022 at 96. 

At the age of 74, I've become inured to the deaths of friends and the famous, and as an old-fashioned American politically, I have a strong aversion to royalty of any species or kind. 

I've been taught we Americans fought our revolution against the anathema of the Divine Right of Kings, that philosophy of the ancient tyrant King George III. I take that seriously. I think kings, queens, princes and strong leaders of any kind are bunk, then or now. They creations of the weak masses who can not rule themselves so they look for a strong person to rule them. 

Democracy, I think, is the opposite of religious rule and the absolute power of royalty.

That idea tends to elicit revulsion me me to monarchs and strong leaders. They are cruel liars and mountebanks.

Yet I felt a little tweak in my heart when my car radio told me Queen Elizabeth II was gone. I think my heart skipped a beat in sympathy and with regret.

Memories of my childhood flashed back, of those black-and-white TV days when I was a toddler and Queen Elizabeth seemed to be everything a fairytale monarch should be. How well she fit the pomp and circumstance of her life.

She was the most beautiful woman in the world to this boy, I remembered, which was how I thought it should be. The queen by nature had to be the loveliest creature on earth, according to all the fairytales, and the nicest and the sweetest, and she was all that to me when I saw her on our little black-and-white television. She was the most wonderful woman in the world, aside from my mother, that's what my TV set told me. 

I was so naïve as a boy I thought the queen and my mom were the same woman, and both had to be loved. They represented everything good in life, everything pure and wonderous. She was the best a woman could be.

Then I grew up and discovered through history what monarchs had done to the world and its peoples, and the fairytale deflated. Those who told you God wished them to rule your life though power and terror, the strong and the ruthless, had to be resisted. If a man or woman informed you of their divinity, they wished to take everything from you. They wished to rule you. That history and current events proved in Russia, China, South America, Africa and all over the globe.

Monarchs and strong leaders were to be denied at all costs.

Yet Queen Elizabeth never seemed like any sort of tyrant.

Oh, I know I don't know enough about the secret workings of the British government, or even one percent of what went on during her rule, and there was always the excuse that she was a mere figurehead and had no real power. Her role was ceremonial, all pomp and circumstance, and I still confused her with my mother. After all, a queen is said to be the mother of her nation, and she exhibited that kindness and strength that both a mother and queen need to have.

She did seem to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

Everything about her indicated she was a good queen to this faraway American. When not much more than a girl she resisted the Nazis, after all, and those hideous creatures were the embodiment of anti-democratic cruelty and power-mongering, thieves of all liberty and life.

A good queen would resist such monsters, and she did.

So let me offer up these wildflowers I photographed today as a tribute to the good Queen Elizabeth II on the day she died.

How odd it was to discover I loved her in the way I loved my mother. Everything I am as an American says that is not how it is supposed to be.

In these 74 years I've known of her, she seemed nothing but sweet and strong and kind, someone who kept the monsters at bay and never became one of them.

A monarch butterfly I photographed today in honor of
the good monarch and good Queen Elizabeth.