Back in 1997, I was sleeping in my apartment when Ian, my husband, told me that Princess Diana had died.  I didn’t believe him until I saw the news on the television.

The death was tragic but I experienced several deaths that year.  The elderly Mother Teresa passed away.  the folk singer, John Denver, died when his plane crashed.  closer to home Dominique, a member of St. John Ambulance where I volunteered, died of a heart attack while driving on a highway.  It seemed as though he managed to pull over to prevent a car crash.

Then my half cousin, Christopher, died in a single car crash.

Life and death happen everyday.  often the death could have been avoidable but not always.  Think of the unlucky person who gets crushed by a tree.  As the saying goes, “ask not for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for thee.”

My mother would say Princess Diana was spending too much money on clothes.  My brother in law said all the attention was unhealthy for anyone.  My Father would say the media was vicious to both Diana and the Duchess of York.

I feel Princess Diana and Princess Charles didn’t have a chance. No marriage would.

In her last days Princess Diana seemed to be on a collision course.  She seemed to be an accident waiting to happen.  She could have lost a limb during her volunteer work with land mines.  If it hadn’t been the car crash, would it have been something else?

At this time in the twenty first century we cannot travel back in time and change history.  What we can do is honor Princess Diana.  I think she would like people to take care of children and each other.