On Thursday, his spokesman insisted the King had taken time to reflect and grieve, but a bereavement expert said the pace of his engagements could conflict with a healthy grieving process. In keeping with a long-winded itinerary, the 73-year-old has worked several days in London, Edinburgh and Northern Ireland this week and has engagements in Wales on Friday, meetings with army chiefs of staff on Saturday and a reception for heads of state. at Buckingham Palace on Sunday, ahead of the Queen’s state funeral on Monday at Westminster Abbey, a ceremony at St George’s Chapel in Windsor and a private burial alongside Prince Philip. Outside Hillsborough Castle on Tuesday he got out of his car to spend 10 minutes talking to many well-wishers. She was smiling and laughing, but when she got to the end of the line and Ingrid Graham, 36, a nail business owner, said: “I’m so sorry for your loss, Your Majesty,” she said, she replied: “Thank you . I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” Joyce Martin, 60, a retired electrical office worker, who shook his hand in Hillsborough, said: “I feel very sorry for him. I know it’s protocol, but she’s his mother and she has to grieve.” The King met the leaders of Northern Ireland’s fractious politics, had an audience with the Secretary of State and then, signing a guest book, wrote the wrong date and his pen leaked. He broke. “I can’t stand this bloody… whenever it stinks,” she said as she walked away. This was “a really normal grief reaction”, said Sharon Jenkins, Marie Curie’s bereavement counsellor. “One of the stages of grief is anger and frustration. Things no longer make sense. The life you lived changed like this. Your emotions have been thrown into the unknown… People seem to fall apart over the little things.” He said a healthy grieving process usually involved being busy but stopping when needed to go through periods of grief and the King’s public duties in recent days could conflict with that. Buckingham Palace’s response to suggestions it was treating Thursday as a “day of reflection” was to insist it was working hard. The King’s spokesman said: “What he’s doing today [Thursday] he’s catching up on a lot of what he would do in terms of state business, phone calls with governors-general, contacts with heads of state.” They stressed that the king had been able to reflect in recent days, adding: “Anyone who could see him in Westminster Hall [on Wednesday] he could see that he was brooding and mourning.’ Indeed, many of his engagements have been church services or vigils, which, while broadcast on global television networks, offer some opportunity for reflection. Asked directly how Charles was “holding up”, his spokesman replied: “People who have worked with the King know how resilient and hardworking he is.” Charles’ close friend Sir Nicholas Soames said: ‘You just have to get on with it. I’m not talking about a stiff upper lip. [The King] he is a person with great emotional intelligence and great empathy, of course he will be affected by this. But the fact that the public demonstrations were so [effusive will help]. I’m not worried about that.” Soames, whose grandfather Winston Churchill was given a state funeral in 1965 when Soames was 16, said: “My mother was of the war generation. Her father was very old for a long time. I do not remember [the public scrutiny] having no bad effect on her at all. In fact, I think she was moved by the public outpouring of grief over Churchill’s death.’ Jenkins, the bereavement counselor, said: “Avoiding grief that can fester and then overwhelm you … As more people continue to move on and not get the rest they need, there is a risk to their health.” He said that, having also lost his father in April 2021, Charles was not just a king but “an orphan as well”. He said that after seeing the Queen laid to rest in Windsor near his father, “you run the risk of [the Duke of Edinburgh’s] Death not processed properly can rekindle and intensify grief.” Andy Langford, the clinical director of Cruse Bereavement Support, a charity, said being busy in the immediate aftermath of a death was common. “We often tell people to try to create time when you can be alone or time with people you trust and share with,” she said. “I’m sure [the King] he calls people around him who have been advising him for years.”
