"Is this generation up to the task", they ask.

The Queen said we are. It was the highest possible honour. It was a bolt of love and solidarity on behalf of her generation. I felt my grandmother sitting with me when she said it and I sobbed.

Of course we're up to it.

Know why? https://twitter.com/Independent/status/1246981170467876871

Because what the Queen knows, as my grandmother told me, is no one is ever 'up to it'.

We have no choice.

This is our fate. And we will meet as we will: many of us will die, many will live but permanently traumatized by horror and walking forever in the shadow of its lessons.

That makes us by definition 'up to it' because in one way or another, we will forever be this moment. Alive or dead.

That's the wisdom of my grandparents that shined thru the Queen's words, a simple but powerful truth they all knew.

We will make do with our lot whatever that is

We will know our true selves, both the good and the bad sided of us, because of trauma.

Some of us will serve in whatever way we can. Some of us hide and never come back out because the fear or loss we experience will be too much.

Some of us will love more, some will hate more.

Each one of us will live a shared collective truama.

But in our own ways. That only we will know about fully. We'll react and respond to it differently as our own unique selves.

Bc there is *only one of you* and there will only ever be just one of you.

There is only one of me.

That's how precious every life is.

My Grandmother was English serving as WAAF. She worked on an airfield to assist with radar for RAF/allied air forces, Canadian, American, Australian.

Nightly they'd take off. Boys barely 18. She got to know them

Each time only some returned.