Princess Diana Once Paused At A Cemetery To Comfort A Woman Weeping At Her Dead Son's Grave

Sep 02, 2019 by apost team

Princess Diana will forever be remembered as the People’s Princess. While Diana was renowned for her beauty and the great love she had for her two sons, she was nevertheless a noted humanitarian. Diana focused much of her work on helping the unfortunate, both when she was married to Prince Charles and when she was acting on her own behalf later in life.

Diana was particularly involved in helping people in developing countries and those nations suffering the effects of war. It was during one humanitarian trip to Bosnia that Diana showed how much she truly cared for those suffering in the world.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly to talk about the premiere of the 2017 HBO documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy, Diana’s friends Jerry White and Ken Rutherford talked with reporters about some of their best memories of the People’s Princess. White and Rutherford’s favorite story involves Diana visiting a cemetery in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, on her final humanitarian mission in early August of 1997. Diana visited the war-ravaged country as part of her campaign against landmines.

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During the final day of Diana’s three-day trip to Sarajevo, White recalled how the princess suddenly felt a need to visit one of the city’s cemeteries. White recalled how, at the time, he tried to dissuade Diana from visiting a cemetery. White pointed out to the princess that they were already running late for an official dinner and they had no room in their itinerary for an impromptu visit to a cemetery. Despite White’s reasoning, Diana was insistent, saying that she couldn’t get the picture of her in a cemetery out of her mind’s eye.

Diana’s driver traveled to Sarajevo’s former Olympic stadium, which was now being used as a graveyard for those who had died during the three-year Bosnian War. White is haunted by the visit till this day. One of White’s starkest memories of the trip was Diana making her way through row upon row of graves. Eventually, the princess came upon a mother tending to the grave of her son. Diana comforted the visibly distraught woman, holding her and wiping away her tears. Although Diana didn’t speak Bosnian and the woman didn’t speak English, White says that they shared a bond that could only understood through mothers.

White says that he took a photo of Diana’s interactions with the woman and later framed it in his home. Looking back at the event, White feels that there was more going on than meets the eye. Elaborating to reporters, White says that Diana had a powerful sense of intuition. When he realized that the photo was taken only a few weeks before Diana’s tragic death in Paris, White became visibly shaken and had chills. The princess’s friend feels that that day in the cemetery, Diana may have felt a psychic connection to the Bosnian mother, sensing her own imminent death and burial.

White noted Diana’s powerful intuition again later in the interview. White says that when it came to her humanitarian visits, Diana seemed to instantly be aware of pain of suffering. White says that it was Diana’s inherent ability to read people that allowed her to be so compassionate and loving, able to say the right thing and ask the right questions in any situation. White later recalled how, when he asked the princess how she planned on approaching the visit to Bosnia, she told him that the most important thing was caring enough to simply be there and that the rest would fall into place.

In her interactions with others, particularly victims of war and disease, White says that Diana was fearless in her compassion. No matter how broken or disfigured a person was, Diana would reach out and touch them, asking them to tell her their story and their hopes and dreams for the future. Diana also showed compassion to the family members of victims, knowing that they shared in the pain experienced by their loved one. One of Diana’s favorite tools in reaching out to others was humor. Sitting with hospital patients, White says that the princess would often tell jokes to bring the light of joy to an otherwise tragic place.

What do you think of how Princess Diana comforted the woman in the cemetery in Sarajevo? What do you think were Diana’s biggest contributions to the world?