In 1979, just prior to being elected prime minister, Margaret Thatcher in an interview with the bbc lamented the deeply depressed state of her beloved Great Britain. At the time, inflation was near 18 percent, unemployment was nearing historic highs, and the nation had retreated into a deep despair. Most people, including Britain’s leaders and elites, had accepted that the era of Great Britain was dead and buried.

Not Margaret Thatcher. “I can’t bear Britain in decline, I just can’t,” Thatcher emphatically stated in the bbc interview.

Mrs. Thatcher was elected prime minister a few weeks later. As prime minister, Thatcher’s supreme ambition—the aim for which she mustered her bounty of impressive traits of character and leadership—was to rescue Britain from its seemingly irreversible demise. We’ve heard a great deal this week about Thatcher’s great accomplishments: her fight for privatization, her thrashing of the unions, the way she restored Britain as a leader in the global community. Thanks to Thatcher, Britain in the 1980s was able to once again—for the first time since World War ii, and before that, the reign of Queen Victoria—accurately call itself Great Britain.

We’ve heard from Mrs. Thatcher’s friends and family, from her political allies and opponents, from those who knew her intimately, and those who didn’t. (Sadly, in a display of the putrid disrespect and dearth of dignity pervasive in contemporary culture, there has also been a great deal of celebration at the news of Thatcher’s death.) Even still, the prevailing reaction to Mrs. Thatcher’s death seems to be one of sadness.

But consider for a moment how merciful it was that she exited the stage when she did.

Let’s assume Margaret Thatcher lived another decade. What would she see? If Britain remains on its current trajectory, Thatcher would witness her nation strangled by debt, its economy paralyzed by entitlement spending, unemployment and inflation. She’d be forced to watch as Britain’s morality and ethics were destroyed by the welfare state, a culture of lawlessness, and the inflow of foreign values and ideologies. She would see Britain’s once distinct national character, its culture and systems—formerly shaped by Judeo-Christian values—diluted and destroyed by secularism and by misguided immigration and multiculturalism.

On the global stage, Mrs. Thatcher would have to watch her nation retreat. She’d see her nation mocked, marginalized and marooned by traditional friends and family. Mrs. Thatcher would witness the fulfillment of a terrifying prophecy, one she herself delivered more than 20 years ago, of a reunited Germany taking control of Europe and then coming after Britain.

Mrs. Thatcher would not only have to witness this, she wouldn’t be able to do anything to prevent it!

Margaret Thatcher devoted the majority of her life, certainly her most active, productive years, to the restoration of Great Britain. She withstood perpetual criticism and attacks; she sacrificed her marriage and family; she endured enormous stress and trial, year after year after year. All in an effort to restore Britain as a prosperous, successful, strong, free, stable, leading world power. For Mrs. Thatcher the sacrifice, I’m sure, was worthwhile and meaningful—as long as the Great Britain she resurrected was preserved.

But alas, it was not.

For a true patriot, and there are precious few today, watching powerlessly as one’s nation stumbles into irrelevance and oblivion is a fate worse than death. Imagine Margaret Thatcher having to experience everything she created, her life’s work, fracture and crumble. Imagine the frustration, the resentment and pain. The heartache.

Thankfully, Margaret Thatcher will not have to suffer such a fate.