The Day Princess Di Died: A snippet from my book

"Lady Di! Lady Di! Renoir!" ~ A place in my heart for those who know source of this quote.

Flowers left for Princess Di by mourners, Aug. 31, 1997. Wiki Commons.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana. The news shocked the world — it was as if everyone was thinking, “princesses don’t die this way” — and shook me deeply. My experience of the grief, sadness and the global sense of shared reflection and stillness was seismic and felt like one of those “vibe shifts” we all talk about now. It certainly shifted things for me and was perhaps the only thing that could pierce the haze of those years of active addiction and self-harm that was at the core of my life.

Every newspaper and talking head painstakingly analyzed and detailed each moment taken by the speeding car as it fled predator paparazzi when they gave chase on motorbikes leading to the crash. Unlike news in our current social media era when one tragic story gets quickly usurped by another, the investigation and the fallout went on for months and has continued to be part of the zeitgeist for decades. For me, the analysis of the tragedy was both spectacle and metaphor. With this one instance I was able to see my own life as an out of control chase, but was also able to finally see that it was a tragedy I might be able to curtail. It took time, but eight months later I changed my life by putting down drugs.

I wrote about that day in my memoir and thought I’d share this tiny excerpt as a time capsule.

August 31, 1997. Twenty five years ago.

I’d love to hear your memories as well.

The Summer Before I Got Clean

I needed to get away and wanted to spend time with Mom, just sitting on a deck somewhere and talking, maybe tell her everything. I called and asked if we could go to the beach, a long weekend, floating in the salty water, reading under an umbrella, seedless grapes and iced tea. We settled on Labor Day weekend at a bed and breakfast in Ocean City down the Jersey shore. It was late August, just after my 23rd birthday. 

I’d told my mother I was working at the center doing hypnotherapy, which I hoped one day would be closer to the truth than the series of increasingly complicated lies I told about my life. Mom was always looking for signs that things were about to change for the better. She believed that lives are divided into times of challenge and strife and freedom from pain. You might get the freedom first, as she believed she did in her bucolic middle class life in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, or you might suffer first, as she believed I had. The problem with this equation was that she had to suffer if I was to have freedom from pain later in life.  

We spent the afternoons sitting on the beach and walking through town. I remember the wispy dunes, the calm of the rattan rocking chairs on the deck of the Victorian house, and me and Mom whispering and giggling as we fell asleep in side-by-side twin beds in our tiny room. 

We went for breakfast on Sunday morning near the bed and breakfast. It was the last day of August and the streets were quiet except for the sound of the breaking waves and swaying trees, the breeze carrying a hint of the autumn to come. It was the day before Labor Day. Parties and barbecues were planned, that last gasp before school returned, but I noticed everyone was quiet, speaking with sad faces and furrowed brows. I don’t remember who told us the news. My mother says it was someone at the restaurant. I only remember the front page of the New York Times: “Diana Killed in a Car Accident in Paris: In Flight From Paparazzi -- Friend Dies.” 

She died in Paris just after midnight. While we slept, she and her lover Al Fayed were chased by paparazzi and crashed into the walls of the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. The giant stoic statues of the Zouave, the 19th century French infantry who wore North African-inspired brightly colored uniforms, stood guard in the Seine with their backs to the tragedy.

I couldn't wrap my head around how someone so large, that important to so many, could perish in a moment. It weighed on me, shook me down in my belly and made me question so many things that I found myself fearful of crying, afraid letting them out would lead to me spilling the truth to my mother like a geyser. 

Back in New York days later, Mother Teresa died as well. She and Princess Di had apparently met in New York a few months before their deaths, drawn to one another “out of an intuitive love of the mystery of people.” As the talking heads on the news bickered about who should get more attention in the press, I grew small and afraid to leave the house and get close to anyone. I was breaking down and unsure of what to do. I knew something had to change, but had no idea how.

Around this time I went to my first 12 Step meeting. I reached out to a friend who I knew was in recovery and asked if he could help me. He brought me to a meeting near Varick Street where everyone wore black without a hint of irony. They sat in a room on the top floor of a small building and took turns speaking. There was a sense of deep calm in the room. I liked what everybody had to say, and liked the potential of having a fresh start, but felt incredibly shy and unsure what to say. Most of all, I knew if I opened my mouth I would not be able to stop. 

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I have so much more to tell you. I can’t wait for this book to come into the world and share. <3