As King Charles has crisscrossed the UK leading national mourning this week, one concern has been repeated among his wellwishers: after losing his mother, has his high-tempo tour left him space to grieve properly?
On Thursday his spokesperson insisted the King had been taking time to reflect and mourn, but a bereavement expert said the pace of his engagements may be in conflict with a healthy bereavement process.
Under a long-planned itinerary, the 73-year-old worked long days in London, Edinburgh and Northern Ireland this week and he has engagements in Wales on Friday, meetings with the military chiefs of staff on Saturday and a reception of heads of state at Buckingham Palace on Sunday, before Monday’s state funeral for the Queen at Westminster Abbey, committal service at St George’s chapel in Windsor and private burial next to Prince Philip.
On Tuesday outside Hillsborough Castle he bounded out of his car to spend 10 minutes talking with scores of wellwishers. He was smiling and laughing, but when he got to the end of the line and Ingrid Graham, 36, a nail business owner, said: “I am so sorry for your loss, Your Majesty,” she said he replied: “Thank you. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.”
Joyce Martin, 60, a retired electricity board worker, who shook his hand in Hillsborough, said: “I feel very sorry for him. I know it is protocol but it’s his mother and he needs to grieve.”
The King met the leaders of Northern Ireland’s fractious politics, he had an audience with the secretary of state and then, signing a visitor book, he wrote the wrong date and his pen leaked. He snapped. “I can’t bear this bloody thing … every stinking time,” he said, as he stalked away.
This was “a really normal grief reaction,” said Sharon Jenkins, a Marie Curie bereavement counsellor. “One of the stages of grief is anger and frustration. Things just don’t make sense any more. The life you lived changed just like that. Your emotions have been thrown out of kilter into the unknown … People seem to break down at the small things.”
She said a healthy bereavement process typically involved keeping busy but stopping when needed, to go through periods of grief, and the King’s public duties in recent days could be in conflict with that.
Buckingham Palace’s response to suggestions he was taking Thursday as “a day of reflection” was to insist he was working hard. The King’s spokesperson said: “What he is doing today [Thursday] is catching up with a lot of what he would have been doing in terms of state business, phone calls with governors general, contacts with heads of state.”
They stressed that the King had been able to reflect in recent days, adding: “Anyone who could see him in Westminster Hall [on Wednesday] could see he was reflecting and mourning.”
Indeed, many of his engagements have been church services or vigils, which, while being broadcast on global TV networks, offer some opportunity for reflection.
Asked directly how Charles was “bearing up”, his spokesperson replied: “People who have worked with the King know just how resilient and hard-working he is.”
Charles’s close friend Sir Nicholas Soames said: “You just have to get on with it. I am not talking about stiff upper lip. [The King] is a man of great emotional intelligence and great empathy, of course he will be affected by it. But the fact the public demonstrations have been so [effusive will help]. I don’t worry about it.”
Soames, whose grandfather Winston Churchill had a state funeral in 1965, when Soames was 16, said: “My mother was of the wartime generation. Her father had been a very old man for a very long time. I don’t remember [the public scrutiny] having any bad effect on her at all. In fact, I think she was touched by the public outpouring of grief at Churchill’s death.”
Jenkins, the bereavement counsellor, said: “By avoiding the grief it can compound and then overwhelm you … The more people keep going and not get the rest they need, there is a risk to their health.”
She said that, having also lost his father in April 2021, Charles was not just King but “an orphan as well”. She said that after he sees the Queen laid to rest in Windsor close to his father, “you have the risk that if [the Duke of Edinburgh’s] death isn’t processed properly, that can be retriggering and intensify the grief”.
Andy Langford, the clinical director of Cruse Bereavement Support, a charity, said being busy in the immediate aftermath of a death was common. “We often say to people to try and craft out time when you can be alone or time with people you trust and share with,” he said. “I am sure [the King] is calling on people around him who have been advising him for years.”
Marie Curie runs a free support line for anyone struggling with grief or needing information or support with terminal illness on 0800 0902309.
