“I couldn’t hold it in any longer,” Prince Harry shared the precise moment he cried at during his mother, Princess Diana’s, funeral in his 2023 memoir, Spare.
Princess Diana died on 31 August 1997 following a car accident in Paris at age 36. Her funeral was held a week later on 6 September 1997.
Prince Harry was 12 and his brother, Prince William, was 15 when their mother died, and they famously walked behind her coffin during her funeral procession.
Also Read | Prince Harry almost did not walk behind Princess Diana’s coffin in 1997Here’s what Prince Harry said in Spare:
In Spare, Prince Harry wrote that his tears “nearly” began to fall when Elton John performed an emotional rendition of ‘Candle in the Wind’ during Diana’s funeral at Westminster Abbey.
“I can’t be sure the notes in my head are from that moment or from clips l’ve seen since. Possibly, they’re vestiges of recurring nightmares. But I do have one pure, indisputable memory of the song climaxing and my eyes starting to sting and tears nearly falling,” Prince Harry wrote.
However, the Duke of Sussex emphasised that he didn’t cry until his mother was buried on the grounds of Althorp House, the Spencer family’s ancestral estate in Northamptonshire.
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“It was reported that Mummy’s hands were folded across her chest and between them was placed a photo of me and Willy, possibly the only two men who ever truly loved her. Certainly, the two who loved her most,” he wrote. “For all eternity we’d be smiling at her in the darkness,” he added.
Prince Harry said that envisioning it as the flag on her coffin was removed, and her coffin was lowered into the ground, was what “finally broke” him.
“My body convulsed and my chin fell, and I began to sob uncontrollably into my hands,” he wrote. “I felt ashamed of violating the family ethos, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer.”
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In the decades since her death, Prince Harry has honoured his mother’s legacy by supporting some of the same charities that she did, such as The HALO Trust.
He and his wife, Meghan Markle, also gave their daughter Princess Lilibet, now 4, the middle name of Diana.
In 2022, Prince Harry said that he always hoped to make his mother proud.
“I certainly hope and believe everything I do makes her proud,” the Duke of Sussex said then.
“In the 12 short years I was lucky enough to have with her, I saw and felt the energy and lift she got from helping others, no matter their background, ailment or status. Her life and theirs were better for it, however short theirs or hers was,” he said.
“I honour my mother in everything I do. I am my mother’s son,” he added.