I will miss you forever.

Her visible and public support of Gay causes, including AIDS, sent me a message that she cared about people just like me, which endeared her to me even more. I felt as if, should I ever get to meet her, she would accept me for who I was and we would become fast friends. She was like a big sister who had gone off to marry a Prince, but who hadn't really changed as a person.

No other public figure has affected me like Diana did. When John Lennon died, many of my classmates who were just a year or two ahead of me literally spent weeks in mourning. I have friends who even to this day still keep the day of his death marked on their calendars. Other celebrities have come and gone, and while I have had a momentary sadness for their passing, it was no different to me from the sadness I feel when I hear about a street shooting or a natural disaster in some far-off place. They're gone, I understand the survivors' pain, but my life is little affected.

Even JFK Jr.'s death has not affected me like Diana's. Sure, he was a nice guy, the one you WANTED to win. He wasn't like his cousins or his uncles, he wasn't a womanizer, a drug addict, a drunk, or a loser who happened to have lots of money. He was cute, smart, and down-to-earth, but a hero, he wasn't. The only mildly heroic thing he did that I can even think of  was when he lambasted his cousins as "poster boys for bad behaviour" in his magazine. SOMEBODY had to say it out loud. But other than that, he was only a potential Great Person. The outpouring of grief everyone around me is feeling doesn't affect me the way it did when Diana died.

As we come upon the second anniversary of her death, the pain still feels acute for me. I still cry when I hear "Candle in the Wind", even the Marilyn version. A chance glimpse of her face on a magazine cover or on TV can freeze me in my tracks.

Seeing Sophie, Countess of Essex at her wedding made me think wistfully of Diana, that the way Sophie was dressed is probably the way Diana would have dressed for the wedding with Dodi that we knew was going to happen. Prince William looks and acts so much like his mother that I cry that she'll never see the incredible man he's going to become. I wanted to stick around this planet long enough to watch William ascend the Throne and bring his mother up to sit beside him as Queen Mother, restoring all her old titles, to Hell with Elizabeth and the rest of those stuck-up royals.

Most of all, I wanted her to still be there, because she was a constant reminder that anybody can turn adversity into opportunity. She had to endure the stress of becoming instantly famous, the pain of a loveless marriage, the heartache of anorexia and addiction, the humiliation of divorce and the loss of her children to the Royalty Machine, yet she somehow managed to rise above it all and emerge stronger. To me, that is the enduring legacy of Princess Diana:

You, too can overcome the bullshit that your life has thrown you and find happiness.

The picture is of the funerary hatchment of the coat of arms of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The arms on the left side of the shield are those of the Prince of Wales: Quarterly 1 and 4, Gules, in pale three lions passant guardant or (England), 2, Or, a lion rampant within a double tressure flory counter-flory gules (Scotland), and 3, Azure, a harp or (Ireland), overall in chief a label of three points argent, and an inescutcheon of pretense quarterly or and gules, four lions passant guardant counterchanged (Wales).

The arms on the right are the arms of Spencer: Quarterly argent and gules fretted or, overall on a bend sable three escallops argent.

The whole is covered by a bend sinister sable, indicating that the bearer of the arms is deceased.