Life’s short, so mend those fences and don’t leave things unsaid

Prince Harry missed out on saying a final farewell to his grandmother the Queen, and there are lessons in that for most families, writes Nathan Davies.

This isn’t a column about the Queen. There’ll be plenty of those written by people who know far more than I do about Elizabeth II and craft far better pieces than I ever could.

This is a column about family and friends and the fleeting brevity of life, inspired by the fact that Prince Harry didn’t get to see his grandmother in the days before she died.

The royal family isn’t immune from the dramas that affect every family, and you’d have had to have been living under a rock to not be aware that there have been issues involving Harry and Meghan.

But by all reports, Harry and the Queen remained close – grandmothers are very forgiving, after all – and the fact that he just missed saying goodbye to his nana has surely broken his heart.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Harry at the Chelsea Flower show 2015. Picture: Getty Images)

I know it broke mine when I missed my own grandmother’s passing by just a few minutes.

It was entirely my own fault. I’d flown to Port Lincoln to say goodbye to as good a nana as you could ever ask for.

She was whip-smart, wise and funny, a lover of instant coffee and Alpine ciggies, and a member of the Women’s Royal Navy Service who bravely and stoically toiled through the war while her husband flew dangerous bombing missions over Germany.

She even went to university in retirement and got a degree in literature at the age of 82.

I arrived home that morning, knowing that nana didn’t have long, that pancreatic cancer was doing what pancreatic cancer does, but dreading going to the hospital.

So, when my brother suggested we could stop and watch our nephews play soccer first, I gladly took him up on the offer.

A little joy before the sadness we all knew was coming.

Of course, I arrived literally minutes after nana passed, to a room full of crying cousins, too late to say goodbye. It’s perhaps my one big regret.

What it did do, though, was drive home a lesson in acting in the now because, as The Flaming Lips so succinctly put it, “everyone you know some day will die”. Oklahoma’s greatest-ever psychedelic rock band goes on to sing:

“And instead of saying all of your goodbyes

Let them know you realise that life goes fast

It’s hard to make the good things last

You realise the sun doesn’t go down

It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round”

Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne made an impressive entrance to Splendour in the Grass in 2012.

I know it sounds a bit cheesy on paper but it’s a wonderful song.

I’ve moved into a period of life where the generation above me is transitioning to old age, which means a lot of friends are starting to have to deal with the loss of their parents, one of life’s big events.

One minute you’re going to 21sts, then weddings, then, sadly, funerals.

I’ve lost a couple of incredible older family friends in the past couple of years, unfortunately at a time when Covid-19 restrictions cruelly stopped people from gathering en masse for funerals. They both deserved bigger send-offs.

Anyway, before this all gets too morbid, the point I’m trying to make is that if there are any rifts – big or small – between you and anyone you love, now is the best time to try to fix them.

It might not be easy.

In fact, it almost certainly won’t be.

It might mean saying sorry when you don’t think you have anything to say sorry for or thrashing out something that everyone’s managed to avoid talking about for the past few years or decades.

Things might even get worse for a while before they get better.

But if not now, then when?

Because at some point, things left unsaid will stay unsaid forever – there’s no getting around that fact.

So, I’m sorry you missed the chance to say farewell to your grandma, Harry, and hopefully – some time in the near future – everyone will be able to put their differences aside and sit down together for a nice big lunch followed by a couple of beers and a game of cricket out the back.

Be a shame to waste all those acres of lawn, after all.