Peaches

In some ways, it must be awful for a family to have to mourn the sudden loss of a young loved one in public. ("What is your reaction to the death of Peaches Geldof?," the BBC asks. Send us your comments." Ugh. That someone has to read all those comments is unimaginable horror to me.)

But in some other ways it might be a comfort, to know that so many feel some small echo of what you do. Otherwise, grief can be so lonely. If a not-famous person dies, the reaction seems unfairly small.

I remember when Chris died, I almost wanted everybody to hurt, because I didn't want it just to be us. I wanted strangers to cry, I wanted a psychic disturbance, I wanted everyone to acknowledge the loss as if they felt it as deeply as I did. My mom resented having to do such prosaic things as eat, as if even metabolism should have stopped bothering her for a respectful interval, and I hated seeing anyone do anything normal; put on hats, drive cars, listen to the radio. So having the internet full of what I was thinking about could have been comforting to me in some strange way, I think.

"So young," people say, and of course it is but also, we are lucky to think this is remarkable: these things happen every day. They happen to strangers, ordinary people, so we just don't know it. Anyway, we can't know. Our minds and hearts couldn't take it, because there are actually quite a lot of these ordinary people, and the effect of this happening to me just once was enough to knock my life off-kilter for years (and, in some ways, forever).

But still I can't help being aware that while it might not always be as commented-upon, it's always just as much a tragedy.