When I was a kid growing up in Tecumseh with my seven siblings, I remember how hard it was for me to get along with all of my sisters and brothers. I was the eldest of eight and bossy. It had to be my way or the highway and I’m sure my siblings still think that today. There were constant fights–sometimes involving slapping–and arguments. My mother, rest her soul, admonished us nearly daily that we needed to get along with each other.
“Your dad and I won’t be around forever, so you kids better start getting along,” she’d say, standing at the kitchen stove with a spatula grasped in her hand.
Of course, she was right. She usually was about things like that.
Now that we’re all mature adults, we do get along and support each other. We have our baggage from our childhood like every other kid. We have good memories and some not so good. But, we did do as we were told and got along.
I mention all of this because this week, Prince Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” was released. The book has leaped to the top of the best-seller lists here and abroad; before 24 hours had passed, around 400,000 copies had been sold.
I was one of the 400,000 who bought a copy–in my case, the Kindle editon.I started reading it Tuesday night and while I haven’t finished it, I can say it’s remarkably well-written, and unexpectedly sad. But it also seems honest.
I remember getting up at 5 a.m. on July 29, 1981 to watch Diana Spencer arrive at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in a royal carriage–a modern-day Cinderella marrying her prince–and the television cameras following her measured walk down the aisle in a puffy-sleeved dress with a 25-foot train and a tulle veil measuring 153 yards in length, the organ blaring out Edward Elgar’s “Sonata in G, Opus 28.” Then her reciting her vows with “Charles Phillip Arthur George” and walking back down the aisle to Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” heading to a happily-ever-after life as a princess.
I’ve always followed Diana in the news, and like many others, I remember where I was when I heard she was killed in a Paris car crash and watching her funeral on television 18 years after her fairytale wedding.
I watched that wedding again as I wrote this column, in part to reflect on the iconic life of Princess Diana and the trail of broken hearts her death left behind. One thing that really jumps out in Harry’s book is that it’s not so much a gossipy tell-all as much as a testimony to what happens to kids when they are faced with trauma–like the death of a parent–that is never addressed. Some folks may consider it gossipy, whiny or bitter, but I find it to be much deeper than just slinging mud at royals. You wonder what would have happened if the royals were less concerned about appearances and more in tune with the very human side of life and death and willing to be open and honest about the process of grieving.
Harry’s revelations, in my humble opinion, are no worse on the Royal Family than his mother’s in her tell-all book, “Diana: Her Story.” He’s really not saying anything most people don’t already know based on the news coverage both here and across the pond. The Sussexes Oprah interview, the Netflix documentary, not many surprises after all of that.
I find memoirs and autobiographies of modern celebrities interesting and enlightening and I’m looking forward to finishing Harry’s book. “Spare” is not a deep, philosophical, analysis of his life, but it is a risk. No matter who you are or your motivation, putting yourself out there and risking ridicule, mockery, even hatred, well it takes courage.
Putting it in print is even braver.
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