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Aunt Sarah, my last surviving aunt, died five days before Queen Elizabeth. So, you might ask: Do those two people deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence?
Absolutely.
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was queen over the United Kingdom, along with 14 Commonwealth realms.
Sarah Elizabeth Stevens, her granddaughter Jessica said in a funeral remembrance, was “prom queen of the Bell Minor Nursing Home” and presided at one time over a devoted husband and six children.
Both queens ruled with a smile, except when somebody didn’t follow the rules.
Queen Elizabeth was widow of Philip Mountbatten, known for his quips, many of which offended his listeners. Prince Philip, he was called, was consort to Queen Elizabeth, which meant he supported his wife in her duties as sovereign.
Queen Sarah was widow of James, known officially as James Allen Stevens, and as Jamie in our family. He also was famous for quips, but harmless ones. His town of Braselton, Georgia, didn’t have any consorts, but Jamie did support his wife by supervising car-building at General Motors and buying cars at the lowest possible price and selling them at the highest.
While Jamie was known for repurposing things—he once turned a Merita bread truck into a camper and called it his Meritabago—Queen Sarah, unlike Queen Elizabeth, was known for her cooking. Her former pastor, Jack Chalmers, and her son Allen practically salivated onto the pulpit as they talked about Sarah’s cooking.
I don’t know how Queen Elizabeth’s kids really thought about her and her royal protocol, but Queen Sarah was revered at her home. A huge poster was positioned beside her casket. “Greatest Mother Award,” it read, and it featured photos of the kids and grands and great-grands and who-knows-who-else, along with their signatures and messages.
Neither queen was known as a complainer. Even when Queen Sarah was sick and hurting, she managed to smile.
Queen Elizabeth no doubt gave her kids plenty of advice, but she was a private woman. She mostly kept her opinions behind closed doors.
Queen Sarah, on the other hand, was not bashful about her advice. “Don’t leave the house without your makeup and lipstick on,” Jessica said her grandmother told her.
The Stevens offspring returned their mother’s love in spades after she ended up in a nursing home. At least one of them was there every day, even during Covid lockdown, when they were forced to stand outside her window and talk to her on a cellphone.
Abandoning physical contact with someone special would be hard for anybody. But for the Stevens family, it must have been painful. I’ve never known a more loving and gregarious bunch. I said one time if one of them met Queen Elizabeth—who is hands-off for the commoner—he or she would kiss her right on the mouth.
Queen Sarah never got the chance to greet the real queen. But she did hold her latest great-granddaughter—Jessica and Chaise Green’s baby—not long before she died.
The baby’s name is Sarah James Green.
