Sorry, Harry – perhaps the last thing the King needed was to see you

For the Duke of Sussex, flying back to LA after seeing his estranged father for half an hour might seem the right thing to have done – but, says Paul Clements (who spent two weeks in a coma), the King could have done without the added emotional burden

Whistle-stop: Harry took an 11-hour flight to spend around half an hour with his father following the news of the King’s cancer diagnosis (AFP via Getty)

When you’re unwell, having an estranged family member show up to offer support – no matter how briefly – only adds to your stress.

I dare say, to Prince Harry, flying in to be with his father who has just been given a cancer diagnosis is the act of a concerned and dutiful son. But after some 17 months spent on mostly non-speaking terms with his papa, would it be uncharitable to say that to the rest of us it all looked rather… performative?

What makes someone take an 11-hour flight – a 5,000-mile journey – just to spend around half an hour with the man about whom he could barely summon a good word in his memoir a year ago? And then to stay overnight in a hotel, rather than at one of the family’s many ancestral homes, before flying home 24 hours later?

It’s not just that the optics of all this are odd. For all it will have achieved in lifting King Charles’s spirits, this really could have been a Zoom call.

Naturally, deep down, Harry will have been concerned about his father’s health, and perhaps wanted to be reassured in person. But also playing on his mind would be the memory of a similar dash he attempted in 2022, to say goodbye to Queen Elizabeth – a flying visit, as we know, he left just a little too late.

Whatever the motivation this time, it has hardly resulted in the reunion between the King and youngest son that royal-watchers have long hoped for. Nor will the monarch have enjoyed being fussed over or asked repeatedly if he’s OK. His Majesty seems much more the type who would rather take himself off quietly, to a garden or forest, for quiet recuperation.

The charitable view is that, knowing that there’s much to discuss in order to fix their broken relationship, Harry has done the gracious thing. But there’s a time and a place for making amends, and it’s not necessarily when one party is at their lowest ebb.

I was 30, and estranged from my father for several years, when a medical emergency – a near-death brush with bacterial meningitis – left me in a coma. I emerged from it a fortnight later, unaware of what had happened and, thanks to a morphine drip, what was going on. As I lay woozily on the hospital ward, surrounded by family and friends, and barely able to assemble a coherent thought, I recall the moment my dad approached my bed to have a few words.

Our relationship had never been good growing up, but as adults, we had both become used to vast longueurs in contact. I had seen him socially for the first time in years just a few weeks before my coma – at my sister’s wedding, where we’d each done our best to be cordial with one another. If I don’t recall much about the big day itself – my spell in ICU blew some gaps in my memory – I do recall his excellent father-of-the-bride speech, and congratulating him on it.

But almost as soon as he’d seen that I’d pulled through my near-death experience, he was gone. In the space of a couple of minutes, he’d made a few grudging remarks before hitting the road back to Devon. It was the last time I would ever see him.

Over the weeks I spent in hospital, getting back my strength and learning to walk again, I was filled in on the saga to get my father to come to my bedside at all. Initially, he had ignored the desperate attempts by my family to return their calls, and how it had taken a house call by Torquay police to relay the news I was on life support. For the fortnight I was out cold, he stayed with my flatmate, who’d heard stories about him from me but had never met him.

When Dad made his daily visit to the hospital, rather than sit with friends keeping vigil around my bed, he’d chat outside with the porters. I later learned from my no-nonsense grandmother that he’d decided he “couldn’t handle it”, and after days away from home, couldn’t wait to get back.

After almost three months, I was discharged, and returned to a flat covered in Post-its that he’d left around the place, each highlighting a little DIY job that needed doing – “faulty light switch: dangerous”, “net curtains need soaking”. I hadn’t expected bunting, but could have done without a to-do list.

My hospital bedside had not been ideal for our father-son reunion. I regret that we never spoke again, let alone managed to patch things up, in spite of my (admittedly, limited) efforts. After his death a few years ago, while clearing out his flat, I found all the notes and gifts I’d sent over the years in a cardboard box, each one unopened.

So, nice try, Harry – top marks for trying to do the right thing, but this really wasn’t it. Flying in and out again has just made it all about you. A simple, private video call from Montecito would have sufficed – and it would have meant the world.