Minister recounts conversations with queen in her final days
Rev. Dr. Iain Greenshields, moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, recounted to ABC News the weekend he spent with Queen Elizabeth in Balmoral in her final days.
“She was 96 and you could see her fragility, but as soon as she started talking and as soon as she was engaged with you, a different kind of person emerged,” Greenshields said.
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She was still filled with her signature humor, he noted.
“I was staying in a place called the Tower Rooms and she said, ‘Your queen is sending you to the tower. She just smiled at me as she said that, and she made sure that I understood, that I got the joke,” he said.
“I asked her what I could possibly give to somebody who has everything, and she smiled at me. I offered her the cross, and she took it very graciously and she wished me the very best in my year ahead as the moderator of the Church of Scotland,” he said.
For Queen Elizabeth, faith was “fundamental,” he said.
“She said right at the beginning of her time, when she was becoming queen, that she was going to ask God for wisdom,” he said, “and that’s something that persisted throughout her life.”
“When I was chatting to her about her faith, she spoke about it and said she had no regrets about starting that journey of faith. She had no regrets at all,” Greenshields said.
Greenshields called her death “astonishing,” noting that she’d been “so vital, so alive, so engaging.”
