On September 8, 2022, the shocking news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death rippled throughout the world. Even as a citizen of another country whose life had never been personally influenced in any way by her Majesty, I gasped when I read the headline on my phone. I immediately stopped what I was doing and told my three homeschool girls the historic news. I even did some brief teaching about the royal family and lines of succession. Within minutes, every nation on every continent was made aware of the end of Britain’s longest reigning monarch.
Joining the millions watching her funeral procession live and world-wide, I had this thought. My two and a half years experience as a hospice nurse taught me quite a bit about family dynamics at the time of a loved one’s passing. When it comes to friends’ and families’ responses to grief, I have seen it all on nearly every level. I have seen overwhelming support, to where I could barely enter a room to care for my patient at the end of their life due to the massive numbers of people gathered. And I have also witnessed total neglect and abandonment, where family could not be reached at any number. I have been the only person in the room as they took their last breath, holding their hand, and telling them they were not alone. I have placed a phone at the ear of a dying loved one so that a relative who lived far away who was unable to come in time could tell them of their love and how much they will be missed. I have also been on the phone with such relatives, asking if they wanted to say their goodbyes, and being told in no uncertain terms they couldn’t care less. Bitterness and unforgiveness have a way of rearing their ugly heads at the time of death.
The memory of those times spurred me to do a quick search. It’s estimated that approximately 40,000 people lie unclaimed in morgues across the United States alone—people who have died without friends, family, or any person at all to contact about their death. These forgotten end up in a pauper’s grave, most without a name, just a number on a crude, wooden box: the homeless drug addict on the street, the abandoned elderly left to die alone in a cheap apartment complex, those without personal connections of any kind, the unwanted.
I watched the Queen’s hearse—pristine and covered in flowers and flanked by guards on all sides in their finest military regalia—drive meticulously down the paved road lined by thousands on both sides, each with a cell phone in their hand held high trying to capture the moment. I saw the coffin draped in the royal standard, topped with a wreath of the finest blooms and foliage cut from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, as well as the Imperial State Crown, the Orb, and the Scepter. As I took all of this in, the words of the apostle Paul came to my mind where he admonished a young Timothy, “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” (1Ti. 6:7) Then I thought of the lonely and unnamed lying cold and forgotten in a body bag on a metal tray with only a numbered toe tag. I realized in that instant, they are no longer the Queen or the pauper, but simply the dead.
The moment Queen Elizabeth stepped into eternity, she stood on the same plane as Jane Doe from the streets. Their is no rank in death. There is no hierarchy in the hereafter. We are all one and the same, and we all carry with us the one thing that is allowed when we step outside of time: our soul. Each of us has a divine appointment. There is nothing and no-one that can change our fate. Our destiny is death. It’s every bit a promise to us as the promise of the love of God. We are not promised tomorrow, but we are promised an eternity somewhere. The location of our forever home is completely up to us.
All of the pomp and ceremony of the most elaborate and widely watched funeral in the world did nothing for Her Majesty as she entered the portals of eternity. The days of mourning by her country and commonwealth, the hours of procession, the syllabus of events that had been carefully planned out and edited since 1969 offered nothing to the Queen herself. It all became, as James spoke of, a “vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then fadeth away” (Ja. 4:14). She was born to life of privilege and service, yet she died just like anyone else.
Regardless of who you are or from where you come, what matters most is what you do with the life you’ve been given today. What you do now will echo in eternity. Make this day count.
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Mat. 16:26