Princess Diana's brother felt like he was "running out of oxygen" when he delivered the eulogy at his sister's funeral.
Princess Diana
Earl Charles Spencer remembers looking over her coffin to see her sons Prince William and Prince Harry sitting there and felt he couldn't breathe with the grief he was feeling.
He told People magazine: "She'd left me as guardian. I was looking directly at William and Harry across her coffin. In the final paragraph I had run out of energy, almost out of oxygen. I had to punch each syllable out of the base of my stomach."
Meanwhile, Charles previously described the funeral as "really harrowing".
He said: "I was lied to and told that the Princes wanted to do it [walk behind the coffin], which of course they didn't ... It was the worst part of the day by a considerable margin, walking behind my sister's body with two boys who were obviously massively grieving their mother. It was a sort of bizarre circumstance where we were told you just have to look straight ahead. But the feeling, the sort of absolute crashing tidal wave of grief coming at you as you went down this sort of tunnel of deep emotion, it was really harrowing actually and I still have nightmares about it now.
"It was impossible not to connect with the emotion coming from the crowd. It was so powerful. Pulsing through us, I think. And it was so bizarre, there was a sort of crunching of our procession, the horses and the carriage and our footsteps, and then the incredible crashing emotion coming in from every side. It was really horrifying."
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