Thomas Markle, father of Meghan, has had a stroke, severe enough to make him unable to speak and for him to be airlifted to hospital in California. His other daughter, Samantha, said simply, “we are praying”.
So that puts paid to his plans to visit London for the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations next week, a prospect that Meghan and Harry will not have relished. But the stroke may also put paid to all manner of other things: his ability to talk properly, to live a normal life…at this point it’s impossible to say.
Mr Markle had been intending to visit London to take part in alternative Jubilee events including TV interviews with Lady Colin Campbell which would have been acutely embarrassing for his estranged daughter. But he was also hoping to do other things: most of all to meet his daughter and her husband, for he has never met Harry. Nor has he ever met their children, his grandchildren.
Four years ago, when the couple married, he rashly allowed paparazzi photographers to take pictures of him and, according to his daughter, denied he had done so. He then apparently suffered a heart attack before the wedding. The upshot was that he has lost all contact with his daughter. No doubt, Thomas Markle can be fearfully embarrassing, and in bitterness he has been all too frank about Harry and Meghan – he has described Harry as “an idiot” who has been “whipped” by his wife. Be that as it may, it can’t have been easy for him either.
But family is family. And in sickness, in a crisis, you rally round your family, certainly your parents. That includes even embarrassing parents, who remind you of your past self, who don’t really fit in with your present idea of who you are, and who might at any point speak out of turn. When your parents are ill, you do the decent thing…you visit them, you go to the hospital. At the very least you call, you keep them in your prayers, and in the US, you pay for them to have the best possible care. Who knows whether Meghan is already doing all this. But if she isn’t, she should. Perhaps the Queen, a good Christian, might suggest it.
Because it is easy to speak messages of kindness and compassion – and the Sussex’s Archewell Foundation is all about care for others – but the hard bit is to start at home. It’s easy, as GK Chesterton observed, to love your fellow man and hate your next door neighbour; still more, to embrace a father who called your husband “snotty”. But compassion starts there, with your difficult relations, not with people you don’t know. At the very least, the couple should pay for Thomas Markle to have the best possible care; they can afford it.
And then, the kind and natural thing to do would be for Meghan to bring her husband and children to meet her father. It’s not too late. Yet.
