In grieving for the Queen, we also mourn the losses in our own lives | Polly Toynbee

She was an emblem of the nation for so long that millions of Britons measured their lives against hers and her family

The grief is genuine. The admiration for the woman who has been an emblem of a nation for so many decades is deeply sincere. There will be appreciation for the great care she took in such a fractious age not to take a side, express a view or add to the rifts that sharply divide the country. Every nation needs a figurehead; and, however perverse the sheer randomness of being born into that role, she did it with remarkable skill and dignity.

How fitting that she should die just after performing her final and most important constitutional role, appointing a prime minister (her 15th). How glad many will be that she lived to see the last hurrah of her platinum jubilee. There's no tragedy in the death of 96-year-old who kept going to the very last. Isn't that the way we all wish to go?

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist