Where were you when Princess Diana died?

If you’re a woman over the age of 30, that’s a question that will immediately transport you back to a moment in time when there was only one news story, only one image on every screen, on every magazine and every newspaper. It was a personal tragedy for a few, and a tragic, historic landmark for millions more.

It was 20 years ago. August 31, 1997.

Mia Freedman writes:

I was lying in bed feeling intensely uncomfortable. It was a Sunday morning in August 1997 and I was heavily, heavily pregnant. Just a couple of weeks from my due date. The kind of pregnant where you can no longer sleep and you have to get up to go to the toilet throughout the night.

I was drinking a cup of tea, in bed, reading the newspapers because the Internet was not yet a thing. The TV was on in the background. And then……. breaking news. Princess Diana had been in a car crash with her boyfriend Dodi Fayed. The paparazzi had been chasing them. In Paris.

This didn’t seem so remarkable. Diana had been in the news constantly during that European summer – our winter. She’d been photographed kissing Dodi and sitting coyly on a diving board that came off the back of his giant boat as they holidayed in the Mediterranean. It was enchanting and I gobbled up every image. We all did. Every bit of press coverage. It would be easy to airbrush that now with what we know about the role the paparazzi played in her death. So easy to pretend I wasn’t complicit in the economy which ultimately led to her death. But we were all complicit in a way. Not in her death, of course, but in the industry that was fuelled by our insatiable appetite for photos of Diana.

Magazines and newspapers sold millions of copies from these photos and that’s because we bought them.

Still, a car crash? It was probably nothing serious. How could it be? She had body guards. She was famous. My generation, Gen X had not yet experienced the sudden death of one of our icons. Our parents could tell you where they were when JFK was shot. Or when Grace Kelly died. Until the day Diana died, we were naive to the fact that celebrity did not make you immune from tragedy.

The news trickled out slowly. Diana had injured her leg. Dodi had died. This information was shocking. How would she recover from this heartbreak? How unfair was this, losing her boyfriend after she’d lost her husband to Camilla?

I called my mother. She was watching the TV too. I felt a knot in my stomach, the kind you get when you’re watching rolling news coverage and it’s not yet clear if events are still unfolding or the worst is over.

It wasn’t. With a stammering voice the presenter told us that word had come that Diana had died.

20 years later, it’s hard to articulate the shock. My husband and I sat on the bed in front of the TV with our mouths open. I had my hand over my mouth in the way I’ve since read women do when they’re confronted by shocking or distressing news. As if to muffle a scream.

My friend Bec Sparrow – who I wouldn’t meet for 15 years – remembers that on the day Diana died, she was driving home to her parents’ house when she heard the news……

“I’d been in the State Library for a few hours and I drove home from the city listening to CDs rather than the radio. As I pulled into my parents’ driveway I saw my dad tinkering on something and he turned and flagged me to wind my window down. “What’s wrong? What is it?” I said. “It’s Princess Diana. There’s been an accident. Her boyfriend Dodi has died but I think she’s okay.”

The next few hours are a blur. Sitting in front of the TV. Hearing the news of her death. And the utter disbelief.

I cried for a week. Maybe more. My grief lasted for a long time. I attended the public memorial service they held in Brisbane and for months and months got into arguments with anyone who questioned why I would grieve the death of a woman I never knew. I cried 20 years ago for exactly the same reason I cried just last Sunday night when I saw footage of Diana and watched William and Harry talk about losing their mum. I cried because she had so much love for people but especially the young and the fragile, the vulnerable, the isolated and the lonely. I cried because she loved those boys, her boys, so deeply and to be taken from them seemed so cruel. I cried because watching her change the world or someone’s world with a hug or a handshake made me believe I could do it too.”

My friend Wendy Squires was a few suburbs away from me when she heard the news.

” I was in the bath and my boyfriend came in and asked me, “What would be the biggest news story today?” I said the Queen dying. He said, “Close. It’s Diana.” I refused to believe him. I went numb. I was mute. It just didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be. I thought of those boys she loved so much. I got out of the bath and turned the TV on and sat there for the next 24 hours without sleeping, trying to take it all in. It was about three days later and I was in a coffee shop when it really hit me. I heard two elderly ladies discussing her death and lost it. I cried for hours that day, for her, her boys and a world that can be that cruel.”

The rest of that day and the days that follow were surreal. I attended my sister in law’s wedding shower within hours of hearing the news and my mother and I sat there weeping quietly together in a corner while she unwrapped gifts and the other guests tried to celebrate her upcoming wedding.

Not everyone felt it that deeply. Some people seemed remarkably unaffected. Some were women but most were men. I distinctly remember men being quite taken aback by how distressed so many women could be about the far-away death of a stranger in another country. Why would you cry for a woman you didn’t know?

GALLERY: Click through to see some of our favourite Diana moments…

Princess Diana as a baby.

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Princess Diana, Princess of Wales kiss as they attend a polo match at Cirencester Park on June 30, 1985 in Cirencester, England.

Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer at Buckingham Palace after the announcement of their engagement.

Diana, Princess of Wales following her wedding to The Prince of Wales at St Paul's Cathedral in central London.

Diana Princess of Wales, wearing the Queen Mary Tiara, attends a banquet on June 15, 1983 in Nova Scotia, Canada.