Prince Harry Recalls Mourning Mum Princess Diana’s Death As A Child
Prince Harry remembered his mother, Princess Diana, in an emotional conversation about loss with Scotty’s Little Soldiers founder Nikki Scott.
In a video released earlier this week, the Duke of Sussex is seen speaking with Scott—whom he has supported since he connected with her in 2017 at an event at Buckingham Palace—about the work her charity does. Scotty’s Little Soldiers helps children who have experienced the death of a parent who served in the British Armed Forces deal with mourning.
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'What you’ve done is incredible; it is truly inspirational. I know that word gets thrown around a lot, but it is. And to see the difference in some of the kids here, especially some of the kids I met previously in 2017, they’re different people,' Harry tells Scott. 'You can see that they’re still processing their grief, but this community of support is everything. It’s amazing.'
Harry and Scott’s talk comes ahead of Armed Forces Day in the United Kingdom, which takes place annually on the last Saturday in June.
While speaking with the prince, Scott recounted the moment she told her son, Kai, that his father, Corporal Lee Scott, had been killed in Afghanistan. At the time, in 2009, Kai was five years old, and their daughter, Brooke, was seven months old.
'It was the worst. How do you tell a five-year-old this?' Scott says. 'Because I literally just shattered his world. He knew that life was never, ever going to be the same.'
'It sounds so corny, but I started to think, ‘How many other children have had a parent who’s died?’' Scott says, explaining why she started the charity. Harry replies, 'There’s nothing corny about that.”
The prince’s mother, Princess Diana, died in a car accident in 1997, when he was just 12.
'Of course, it’s so easy as a kid to think or convince yourself … I wouldn’t know, I was 12,' Harry says to Scott in the video. 'For you, for an adult, it seems to be the same. You convince yourself that the person you’ve lost, you need to be sad for as long as possible to prove to them that they’re missed. But then, there’s this realisation of, ‘No, they must want me to be happy.’'
He continues: 'What you’ve done now is not only transitioned to that with not only the memories … but then the smiles you put on all these kids’ faces. That’s the medicine. That’s the antidote to the loss.'
'It’s about teaching young people to celebrate their parents’ lives,' Scott tells him.
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