The passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II last Thursday began a 10-day period of national mourning for the United Kingdom. Mourners of all walks have since been finding ways to pay their respects to a beloved queen regnant, who maintained a steady, devoted and dignified presence in their lives for 70 years.

Amongst the sea of floral tributes and notes left by mourners, as one way to honour her life and death at prominent landmarks, it’s been reported that many have quoted a deeply poignant phrase attributed to the monarch herself 21 years ago: ‘Grief is the price we pay for love.’ It was the culminating phrase in the Queen’s message to the congregation of mourners at St Thomas Church, on Fifth Avenue in New York City, at the memorial service held following the September 11 attacks. President Joe Biden quoted the words in his speech this past Sunday, in remembrance of both the late Queen and the victims of 9/11.

The moving nature of the phrase comes from its use of contrast and reversal in equating the feelings of ‘grief’ and ‘love’ in humanity, across the central, collective sense of the ‘price we pay’, as people in our world. The sentiment is at once stark and comforting, suggesting grief and love as the greatest loss and gain of life, bound up together in this powerful and unifying emotional transaction that binds people to each other. If we are fortunate enough to love, then we must also grieve; it’s the dearest, most crucial cost of being human.