Diana (28 page)

“I think of parents who this very night are standing around a hospital bed, not knowing if their children will wake in the morning.”

During a visit to the Childline Charity Headquarters in London, she wondered aloud: “How do your counselors manage to listen to this every day and not take it home with them? How can children experience that kind of harm and grow up into loving parents?”

In 1988, Diana addressed the Annual Conference of Dr. Barnardo’s, a charity devoted to caring for orphaned and disabled children: “I have seen … efforts made to help families remain together and in the work undertaken to provide foster homes or personal residential care for those young people unable to live with their own families. Recently, I visited three projects which, in quite separate ways, were examples of family life bringing new hope, help, and security to children and young people in very varied circumstances.

“In Liverpool, for instance, it was the family of a profoundly handicapped teenager. In this case, the demands made on her parents were so great that when young, her parents had no option but to place her in a long-stay hospital. After many years in the hospital, she went to live at [a care home], where the experience of having personal, committed care, linked with a carefully worked-out learning program, has enabled her to make enormous progress. Now this young woman spends each weekend with her parents, and the weekdays
with Barnardo’s. A fine example of a family reunited.

“I fully realized that for many people, family life is not always a happy experience. They may have been thrown out of their homes, or circumstances may have forced them to leave. Some are homeless. Others are at risk of drug addiction or prostitution. It’s even more of a challenge if such young adults are also parents. In Leeds I met one young woman with her five-month-old baby who, after several years in care, is now being helped by Barnardo’s to establish a home with her boyfriend and to provide some real security for her child.

“As a mother of two small boys I think we may have to find a securer way of helping our children—to nurture and prepare them to face life as stable and confident adults. The pressures and demands on all of us are enormous. I do realize that the view of what constitutes a family life is broader today than it was a century ago. Today few children lose parents through early death, but many do experience that loss through divorce, and increasingly more complicated families result from separation and remarriage. A statistic which
brings this home is that one in eight children live in single-parent families. These children’s experience of family life may be different, but I do not believe that it need be any less satisfying or effective. When the good doctor [Barnardo] started his work at the end of the last century, he was concerned with orphans. Today, over a century later, the organization which carries his name, while still deeply involved in the care of children, is now working with children and their families. I have been asked today to reveal to you all Barnardo’s new identity. I believe and hope you will agree with me that it captures many of the elements which are important in family life: commitment, togetherness, and building the way ahead to the future.”

On her work with Barnado’s: “I’m going out there to meet those children and I’m learning all the time. I’m trying desperately to understand how they cope.”

“It’s customary at this year of year to focus attention on those less fortunate than ourselves. But homelessness is an experience which isn’t confined to the festive season. It is a daily problem.”

“I’m appalled at the dangers young people face on the streets and how vulnerable they are to exploitation. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who resort to begging, or worse, prostitution, to get money in order to eat. Young people whose physical and mental health has been severely damaged by life on the streets. Young people who take drugs to provide some escape from the hardship they face. Young people who’ve been attacked and abused on the streets and face the indifferent stares of passersby who have no idea how brave they are or how much they’ve suffered.”

In Angola she met many children who had been maimed by land mines. “When you see little children like that in that situation it just brings it all to the surface. It makes me very sad, what I have
seen. It’s very traumatic as a mother to witness this.”

“If we can do a proper job of giving our children the affection which nature demands, I believe it will help enormously. Hugging has no harmful side effects.”

About
The Washington Post
matriarch Katharine Graham, whom former New
Yorker
editor Tina Brown described as “the kind of social protector that Diana always lacked,” Diana said simply, “I love her. I really do.”

When she learned that journalist Anthony Holden was working on a book called
The Tarnished Crown,
she told his wife: “Perhaps it should be called ‘The Tarnished Tiara’?”

Before the wedding, the media hunger was already beyond ravenous. One reporter told her she seemed to be bearing up quite well. “It must be quite a strain with all of us after you,” he said. “Well, it is naturally,” she replied. “You seem to
be doing very well,” he continued. “Well, I’m still around.”