Diana visited Mrs. Clinton at the White House after an American Red Cross fundraiser for victims of land mines. The White House
World mourns princess Diana
The British tabloids were drenched in Diana coverage, and on this side of the ocean, the National Enquirer devoted 72 pages to the all-time cover girl.
Then, five days later, Mother Theresa, the nun who tended to poor, dying Indians, died in Calcutta at the age of 87. Breaking precendents, the Nobel Peace Laureate called "the saint of the gutters" was acccorded a state funeral.
But it was the Princess of Wales who sparked the real outpouring of grief. From the thousands of tributes on the web, we grabbed these representative messages:
"I liked and shall always remember her by these words: 'I can give that love.' Those few words have more eloquence than any political speech of this century."
"I was shocked by the death of Princess Diana like anyone else, but what shocked me more was the extent of sadness and loss felt by commoners as well as not-so commoners."
Our favorite tribute came from The New Yorker. "She wasn't just beautiful. She was like the sun coming up: coming up giggling."
As the piles of flowers grew -- until Diana's family actually beseeched mourners to stop -- The Why Files got to wondering: What explains this outpouring of grief? And what do we know about the grieving process?
The princess and the toad
Diana as myth was perpetuated by the international media, says Klass. "You have people wanting to participate in the grief, because in the media age, people feel certain figures are part of themselves."
Indeed, the mass grieving legitimized private mourning, permitting mourners to "express private feelings in a public way," he adds. "It's acceptable to put flowers where there are other flowers."
The outpouring could also reflect a mass of unhealed grief among the public, according to Judy Koeppl, a grief counselor at the San Damiano Center for Life and Loss Integration in Madison, Wis., who suspects "some of that grief over Diana reflects the losses in their own lives."
In a deadly confluence of bad journalism and bad driving, Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a Paris car crash Aug. 31 while being chased by overeager photographers.
The dramatic outpouring of grief that followed broke the stiff British upper lip. Millions lined London's streets to watch her funeral procession. The ceremonies may have been the first ever shown on theater-size television screens. As many as two billion other people watched the funeral on television, making this the largest television audience in history.
"I'm really sorry you had to leave so soon. Though I didn't like you as royalty, I loved you as a kind-hearted human being."
To Dennis Klass, the mass public grieving over Diana is a response to a mythic death. Klass, a professor of religion at Webster University in St. Louis, defines "myth" as "the story that is most true -- Diana was queen of our hearts." Klass thinks she represented another myth, since she "married a prince and came home to find a twerp. There are a lot of women who've had that experience." (Interested in the escapades of some of Diana's predecessors?)
What is grief and how does it work?
