She didn't know why but the image of a cemetery was stuck in her head that day and she made an unplanned trip to the war cemetery in Bosnia.
Princess Diana was a humanitarian through and through. She traveled the world for her humanitarian causes, and during one such visit, while working on her crusade against landmines in Bosnia, she shared a deeply private moment with another mother who was crying over her son's grave on August 8, 1997. She made an unplanned visit to the Sarajevo War Cemetery where the fateful incident took place.
Jerry White who was part of a documentary, Diana, Our Mother, talked about the incident that touched his heart as well. EW said that she took a small side trip to a cemetery while she was in Bosnia, a few weeks before she died. This moment still haunts White and he said, "It still gives me chills when I recall this powerful, unscripted, unplanned moment.”
“The image of her in a cemetery in Sarajevo, on the last day of our three-day trip [still haunts me]. It wasn’t planned. It was never on the itinerary. But Diana told me three times, ‘I can’t get this picture of me in a cemetery out of my mind.’ She asked me if there was a cemetery nearby, as it was something we should visit,” he said, according to EW. “'Jerry, I have this feeling, this image of me in a cemetery, it’s strange.’ We were running late for a final reception, and there was no room for this detour, but Princess Diana seemed adamant, mysteriously. So, we drove out of the way to the former Olympic stadium that had become a massive graveyard for those killed during the war. I watched as Diana took her place among hundreds of tombstones. It was eerie, now that I reflect on it. She walked slowly, among tombstones and even yellow rose bushes."
It was there that she met the "Bosnian mother tending to the grave of her son, grieving visibly."
"Diana didn’t speak Bosnian, and this mother didn’t know English. So, they just embraced. So intimately, so physical, so emotional, mother-to-mother. It was vintage Diana, reaching out, wiping the mother’s tears and cheeks. It’s the only framed photograph of Diana I still have in my home. After her death in Paris only weeks later, I came to wonder whether the Princess intuited her own death, her burial. I don’t know, but maybe, psychically, intuitively, Diana sensed she was going to die. It still gives me chills when I recall this powerful, unscripted, unplanned moment, somehow prescient," said White.
She had also visited Angola to advocate about the same cause and was photographed there wearing a visor and bomb-proof breastplate as she walked through a minefield.
“I’d read the statistics that Angola has the highest percentage of amputees anywhere in the world…that one person in every 333 had lost a limb, most of them through land mine explosions,” she told the press in Angola, which was captured in the documentary Heart of the Matter. “But that hadn’t prepared me for reality.”
Today, Prince Harry carries forward her legacy by working with the same Halo Trust, which works to remove the landmines in Angola.
References:
https://time.com/4726237/prince-harry-princess-diana-kensington-palace-landmines/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJO0bzdjlng
https://ew.com/tv/princess-diana-hbo-documentary-gallery/?slide=5697806#5697806
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Daily Express
