I buried the American royals

During Ted’s funeral, my brother sent me a text that read, “What did you bury with Ted?” At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant. But then I smiled and understood.

While we share an ethnic name with the once-royal Americans who gathered on Saturday, my brother and I are more like “wild colonial boys” in the song; we come from a people who overthrew royals. Not only do we not believe in Camelot, but we take every opportunity to remind believers that this is America and there’s a great land for royal adorers across the pond, past the island where our ancestors originated.

The grave in my mind is fresh, I still see the resting place, its fresh upturned soil, but soon, good thick grass will grow over it. With Ted, I buried the reality of the American Royal Family. I may mourn the passing slightly. The Ralph Lauren photo shoots may remind me of the idea, once in a while. Anderson Cooper’s Vanderbilt blood may ooze posh vibrations now and then on CNN. But get this: the forty and fifty-somethings of Ted’s family only rated blue and green dots in the NY Times diagram of the family tree.

I have an aversion to crowns, even Mardi Gras for-a-day types, even the paper ones you get from the burger joint and I always thought it absurd that an Irish family, of the papist variety, reveled in the Camelot mist from a mythical land far away, yet a real land where royals still reign, barely. It’s good to bury the royal idea.

But then again, without the royals, what would wild colonial boys and girls do?