The world’s eyes will be on our Queen as she spends Christmas with her family at Sandringham. It’s easy to forget that the Queen is a also a grieving widow.

Like any woman who has lost the husband she adored, a man who was her rock and she was married to for seventy-three years, the Queen will no doubt reflect on Christmases past spent at Sandringham House with her family.

Her beloved Prince Philip died only last April and the first anniversary without your loved one is always the hardest.

The Queen has returned to Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate where her husband enjoyed a private life away from prying eyes following his retirement. The Queen may have opened his desk drawers, read his letters, maybe his diary if he kept one, and sighed with fondness at a private photograph or memento.

Hello magazine last month reported that the Queen’s was spotted being driven to Wood Farm and gazing out of the window of a Range Rover wearing a headscarf and sunglasses. She was said to be overseeing arrangements for her family Christmas at Sandringham, an annual family tradition. Having missed spending the festive season there last year due to the pandemic, it will be bitter sweet moment for her this year.

We always toast absent friends at the Christmas dinner table with a glass of wine and allow ourselves a quiet moment to remember them. Maybe the Queen and her family will do the same.

I very much hope our Queen’s health recovers as she takes time out following a back sprain, and that she is able to enjoy a very happy and merry festive season as we prepare to enter 2022 and celebrate the 70^th anniversary of her reign.

I’m sure her great grandchildren, with their cheeky ways, will bring a smile to her face if her heart should sadden.

Pic: Courtesy of Norfolk Live