When Princess Diana died ten years ago, I was shocked by the incredible waste of her being killed by a drunk driver while escaping the paparazzi. But I learned the following from Tina Brown's book, The Diana Chronicles:"(The doctors) found a tear in the upper left pulmonary vein, caused when the velocity of the crash displaced the heart from left to right. They stitched the tear. The bleeding stopped, but Diana's heart gave up again."
The People's Princess literally died of a broken heart. So sad, yet somehow incredibly appropriate for the woman who had been disappointed so often by love.
I enjoy reading all I can about Princess Diana - I haven't read this book I'll have to get it!
ReplyDeleteMy grandma is still alive, she lives across the street from my parents, and still makes her strawberry pie every year. We all are so thankful to still have her with us. My papa died in 1999 we thought it would be hard for her, but she has really done well!
To answer your question about ziploc bags on school supplies list: I think different teachers probably use them for different things. In my classroom we use them to put game pieces or manipulatives in. We also use them to send anything with little pieces home with the students. I wondered if I would get questions about that - lol!
I was surprised at how deeply I felt Diana's death. There was something about her I identified with--the vulnerability, the wanting to be a good woman... I was saddened by her death.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to get Tina Brown's book
It was very sad that she died, though if she had had the good sense to wear her seatbelt she would most likely still be with us. She would not have escaped without injury, but she would have been spared that tear in her heart which eventually ended her life.
ReplyDeleteThat book by Tina Brown was very interesting. I still lived in England when she died. In fact I was a police officer and was on duty in full formal uniform at her funeral. What I do remember was the wave of mass hysteria that swept the nation when she died, and anyone would have thought a saint had died. Some of the things said of her were so saccharine as to be nauseating. She did a great deal for various causes, notably AIDS treatment, but she was also dishonest, manipulative and a serial adulteress, long before her husband went back to his mistress. She was brilliant at using the press. She just had to look cow eyed at a camera and everyone believed everything she said! She wore the mantle of victimhood better than any actress!
I enjoyed the Tina Brown book because I felt it was very balanced. Didn't pull a lot of punches about Diana's emotional problems, her recklessness (with both the press and her personal safety) and her piss-poor choices in men. Yet somehow, every page, every step of the way, I pulled for her. I don't know many men, at least on this side of the pond, who find her as sympathetic, so maybe Diana is just "a chick thing."
ReplyDeleteThere's a fascinating book called "Diana and Jackie: Mothers, Maidens and Myths" that compares and contrasts America's Queen and the People's Princess. They had a lot more in common than you might originally think, but they handled their lives very differently. Jackie was smarter, tougher and more independent. In other words, she was able to maintain the British "stiff upper lip" better than Diana, while Diana seemed more a product of our confessional Oprah culture.