In the world of foreign diplomats and the formal world which received her royal patronage, she was Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother - a title uniquely hers.

The "Old Queen", as Queen Mary was known after the death of George V, could never have engaged the nation's affections in the same way and it is impossible to imagine her being called anything other than Her Majesty.

She was greatly respected but not loved by the ordinary people as her daughter-in-law came to be.

It was, of course, a different age and royalty was light years away from the lives of the ordinary citizens and little was known about their way of life outside their public appearances.

To many folk all round the world, the Queen Mother was simply and affectionately known as the Queen Mum and no one who called her by that name meant any disrespect by using it.

But what we must not forget is that she was the mother of our Queen, with all that that implies.

When any of use lose a mother or father, we are at liberty to show our deepest emotions in public and no one feels anything other than sorrow for us and the sadness we are bearing.

Our spouses and our children put their loving arms around us, sharing our pain and our friends offer us their help and support at a time of great personal sorrow.

If we sob our hearts out, no one thinks we are behaving in any way oddly. But what if you are the Queen?

There will be a camera lens within inches of her face, you can bet.

Photographers will all be vying to get the one shot of the Queen showing her emotions, forgetting that while we are mourning for a queen, she is mourning a deeply-loved mother.

There is a saying: "You are a wife until you are a widow but you are a mother until you are a corpse."

Those of us who have been privileged to see our families grow up and often become parents themselves will recognise, if we are truthful, that we still regard them as children however successful they may have turned out to be in their chosen profession.

The Queen will recognise the loss that the country may be feeling but for her it will have little to do with the Queen Mother's public persona and everything to do with losing a deeply-loved mother who happened to have been a queen.

Not for her the public comfort of the Duke of Edinburgh's arm around her and the catharsis of bitter tears in public.

Not for her the chance to pay very public and deeply-felt homage as the Prince of Wales so eloquently did in his TV appearance.

She has spent a lifetime of public service and has often been thought to be without any deep emotions.

But surely we can be generous to her on this very personal occasion and allow her to shed a public tear if she wants to, without the intrusion of lenses and all the other paraphernalia of modern journalism.

When we watch the ceremony of the Queen Mother's burial tomorrow, we shall be watching a little bit of history in the making.

But we shall also be watching a devoted daughter mourning for her mother and grandchildren saying goodbye to a dearly loved grandmother.

For many of our age group it will have a poignancy beyond the formal ritual and tears will be shed for the mother before those for a queen.