After a long life and a very long reign in modern human terms, Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday. She was a figurehead not just throughout the British Commonwealth, but across the world. By all accounts, she was a diligent and honourable woman, holding her post with distinction. In recent decades, she had also been the steadying hand in a high-profile family that has unravelled in many ways. From a distance, the Queen always struck me as a consistent, dignified, and sincere person; someone worthy of respect.
Contrast this to the recent death of the Man of the Hole, the last surviving member of an indigenous South American tribe who were murdered for their land. He had lived alone since 1995, with no one else remaining from his people, and indeed, no one else even able to speak his language. His actual name is unknown, unlike that of the Queen (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor). As far as we know, he lived a simple life of hunting and farming.
I have written on a similar theme before, in Easter 2018, when I contrasted the deaths of Billy Graham and Stephen Hawking with the death of a young Papua New Guinean woman. It is perhaps time again to take a moment and reflect on life and death.