DATE: Thursday, September 11, 1997          TAG: 9709090128

SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS         PAGE: 09   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: GUEST COLUMN 

SOURCE: BY LYDIA KING 

                                            LENGTH:  107 lines

CHILD-LIKE FAITH IN HAPPY ENDINGS DIES WITH DIANA

On July 29, 1981, the sun shone the way it can only shine in memories of childhood. My best friend, Laura, and I knew we needed a parade, so we decorated a rusty old shopping cart with pink crepe paper and honeysuckle vines.

We raided mom's costume jewelry chest and somehow managed to wear every necklace, bracelet, bead and bangle. Laura propped a plastic ``pearl'' and rhinestone choker above her blond pigtails for a crown. I tucked a red towel into her bathing suit straps and promised it looked like a cape.

My poor, mistreated brother Brian was drafted to play Charles. He obediently clipped a bow tie on the neckline of his tee shirt, but unconditionally refused the honeysuckle boutonniere.

I remember pushing that rickety cart across N. Shore Road, and into the narrow, gravelly lane. Laura shrieked as my short legs gained momentum and the cart jolted forward. We raced to the Raleigh House, where a British family was staying.

Four houses away, we started hollering ``Chas and Di, hip, hip, hooray!'' After three passes, the poor folks who lived there were forced to come to the screen door. The mother, a kind woman with short brown hair, waved and smiled.

The red-headed ``Prince of Wales'' grinned like Alfred E. Newman, exposing his two missing teeth. The Princess Bride, only 10, grew suddenly shy, and hid her face behind her bath towel cape.

I had to compensate, I felt, and so I waved hard with both bejeweled arms. Unfortunately, I forgot that I was supposed to be pushing the cart. It rolled about 15 feet away before Laura and Brian started shrieking. Front-heavy, it spun in circle.

The father, a gray-haired, serious sort, titled back his head and belly-laughed. Our mission was accomplished!

This parade wasn't for Diana: it wasn't even really about Diana. It was about the sense of hope that 10-year-olds have, that absolute faith in happy endings. It seemed like the world's grown-ups had finally joined us in the suspension of disbelief.

The happiness we felt then was end-of-summer joy, when the sun burned the same day after day and there was nothing to do but swim and ride bikes and play. I saw no reason why it couldn't last forever.

I didn't want to know what went on after The Honeymoon. In my experience, the image was supposed to grow filmy and fade after they rode off in that glass carriage. I was sure that they would live ``happily ever after,'' suspended in that fairy-tale summertime without end, without death. Those incontrovertible words, THE END, were supposed to fill the screen, huge, large enough for a young couple to seek shelter behind. In the shadow of those words, perhaps they could have nurtured a marriage, protected it from the glaring eyes of the world.

I dismissed the wide-eyed, strangely child-like princess and her toy-soldier husband from my consciousness. I had more important concerns, like adolescing and chasing boys.

Through the years, the occasional scandal would filter through, but I somehow remained blissfully ignorant of the royal fiasco. When I moved out of may parents' home, I refused to buy a television, so only the most publicized debacles reached my attention.

I'd heard about Camilla, I'd heard about the riding instructor. I had no interest in discovering more. I'd developed a lukewarm sort of prejudice, a halfhearted conviction that nothing the royals did or said could possibly interest me.

Until her death.

I wanted to explore what the tragedy might mean for my generation. I hopped on-line to research the issue, and was shocked to discover that 10 memorial web pages had blossomed in the 24 hours since her death. I read some of the hundreds of letters posted on the electronic wailing wall. Many of them expressed great warmth, a depth of affection, rather than the shallow infatuation with royalty I might have expected. I began to suspect my prejudices were wrong.

Moments after I downloaded the transcript of Diana's 1995 BBC interview, I knew my smug little project was doomed. Diana's tone was problematic from the outset; she sounded humble and honest, with a gentle but persistent sense of humor. She spoke with a real voice, and, even in my prejudice, I had to recognize wisdom.

In the heart of the interview, she revealed a strong sense of herself and of her mission on earth.

``I think the biggest disease the world suffers from . . . is the disease of feeling unloved, and I know that I can give love . . . ''

I could see the evidence of that gift, belatedly, in the outpouring of the world's love and grief at her death.

Love was the meaning of Diana's life, a meaning that did not end in that hospital when her heart stopped beating. I was wrong about Diana. Because her life had such powerful meaning, I can't believe her death is meaningless.

My computer screen stares at me, unblinking. I think of the paparazzi's greed, the excess speed, the possible drunkenness that contributed to her death. I know her death is a sign of our times. It's a terrifying era when The National Enquirer has staked out the moral high ground, by refusing to buy those fateful photographs.

I click on another home-made memorial page, and read W.H. Auden's ``Funeral Blues'' while the images are clarifying.

Anyone who loved Diana, who wanted to escape vicariously by watching her, contributed to her death. Anyone who wanted Diana revealed, who wanted to see more than Diana chose to show the world, participated in the chain of events that rocketed that Mercedes, roof first, into the pillar.

And I think, what part do I play in this, with my new-found fascination?

I notice that the URL contains the word ``nude'' and I realize what kind of picture is being downloaded. I suddenly wonder what a princess would look like. God forgive me, I momentarily hope that she'll console me with our shared humanness, the ``flaws'' we women develop over the years.

I shake my head, understanding more than I wanted to understand. I move the mouse pointer to the top of the screen. I click down once, and the transmission stops. MEMO: Lydia King, a resident of Norfolk, is a 1997 graduate of Old

Dominion University.

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