sophie heawood

My lowest point of 2010: When I had been on so many flights for so many days that I had completely lost track of which city I was flying to.  So I got off the plane, walked into the terminal with the other passengers, and then panicked internally.  As they headed for baggage reclaim I instead dived straight into the ladies loos, locked myself in a cubicle, sat on the bog, and got my Blackberry out. I turned on the GPS navigation and kept pressing ZOOM OUT until it went from showing that I was in terminal two to actually telling me which airport I was in, in which world. As I recall it was Phoenix, Arizona, The Desert, The US, The Universe, The Wide Sheltering Galaxy of Gods. 

Of course, there were lower points than that. When my friend in London died of cancer in his 30s. And his devoted wife Geri updated his Facebook page to let us know that that “we lost our Jerome today”, that his battle with sarcoma was over, that she and his family were so grateful for all our support these last few months. By the time I saw the post, only shortly after she’d written it, somebody had already clicked that they “liked” this.

And so I sat there in bed in LA by myself, having just woken up and switched on my laptop, weeping, unable to believe that Jerome had actually gone and died and wasn’t just going to keep posting funny updates about the weird spluttering noises coming from the other beds during chemo night at the Royal Marsden forever. But during those next few days when his death was too big and too unfathomable to rage against, I found myself stumbling around in a sad swearing fury that somebody had “liked” this.

My friend David wants to write a guidebook to social etiquette in the iPhone age. I’m thinking of offering to write the chapter on not “liking” it when somebody’s young happy husband drops dead.