The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1997. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

I fell in love with you when I was twelve years old. It was the year you got married, and I'm not sure, but I believe the entire country was in love with you. And how could they not be? Sprayed across the pages of PEOPLE magazine, how could anyone not be mesmerized by the 19 year old future queen, the new wave haircut, the demure glancing at the floor when out with the present royalty? You were something we had never experienced before, didn't know how to experience -- a princess, a real, live, honest-to-God princess.

I never thought you'd be able to get more beautiful than you were that day, that day with the wedding dress dragging all the way across the British empire. But I got a little older and a little wiser, and you did too, and you proved me wrong. You got more beautiful with each passing year, to the point that you were positively glowing by the
time of your first child, yet another heir to the throne that seemed with each passing day would never be passed on. Just how long can that woman live, anyway?

The thing that seemed to surprise the British most was how endearing you became to us ugly Americans AFTER the scandals, AFTER the kiss-and-tell, AFTER the divorce. Why would that surprise you? You turned out to the be the first British person in history to publicly talk about their dysfunctional childhood, their dysfunctional marriage, be able to stand up and say that you came out the other side still standing. Hell, in America, that's a way of life! And we know how difficult it is to walk away from it, even when you're just walking away from the security of having someone to keep the bed warm on cold January nights. When you walked away from being the Queen of England for it -- well, that's when you stopped being a princess, and started being a goddess.

I fell in love with you when I was twelve years old. And I remained in love with you, ever since, all the way through the new photos of you in Vanity Fair two months ago that just made us all pause in the 7-11 and go, "That's YOU?"

And now.

And now you are something again that I have never experienced before -- you are my first James Dean, my first Marilyn Monroe, and don't give me any of that Kurt Cobain shit, 'cause he was a smackhead and fated to die and brought the whole thing on himself. No, you were the woman I was going to grow old with, the woman to check my passage in life against. You were the woman who was going to grow into the regal mother, grandmother, ambassador, that you were already shaping yourself to be.

And now you are already a montage of videoclips and glossy photos, you are a tender coffeetable memorial waiting to happen. You are forever stuck in an endless loop, starting at a new wave haircut and ending with a tunnel in Paris and a dozen paparazzi on racing motorcycles. And how, tell me how, when eight years from now I hit your death age, how I will be able to stop my clock and not slowly age on way past the time you never had, how I will be able to stop forever wondering in my head what you would be looking like now, right now, whatever age of mine that might be?

I can't.

I fell in love with you when I was twelve years old. I'm not sure, but I believe the whole world did.

I don't believe in leaving flowers on iron-clad gates. I don't believe in declaring, like it's some kind of surprise, that I was shocked and dismayed by your death. I believe in writing. I believe in love. And I believed in you.