In these times of division and hurt, our family bonds and gestures of care are more precious than ever

It’s not been a good week for the media. The Guardian ran an editorial accusing David Cameron of privileged pain over his son, Ivan, who is my nephew. Then former Welsh rugby international Gareth Thomas accused a tabloid newspaper of forcing him to admit he was HIV positive and telling his parents before he did. Then the Sun revealed a heartbreaking tragedy surrounding cricketer Ben Stokes’s family . Guardian editor Kath Viner rescinded their words with an apology (and I know her to be devastated they were ever published). The public and their readers swiftly condemned all three stories on social media.

When Ivan died, I later sat with him, while my sister took a short break. She had broken the news to me earlier that morning and you never know what your reactions will be — mine was to be with him . I don’t want to describe (nor can I) the long moments that followed.

The next day, like a homing pigeon, I went to work. And sat in an editorial meeting. The light was weird, like an Instagram filter had been placed over reality. I could hear what people were saying but my synapses weren’t connecting. I left and sat in the loo, unable to move; everything had slipped between a crevice where normality didn’t exist. A colleague came into the bathroom beside me and her hand appeared under the partition. That hand felt like the kindest and most intuitive thing anyone has ever done.

This act of compassion is how I mostly think of my fellow human. We are bound together as sentient beings because our lives revolve around loving and protecting our families.

Despite the news pummelling us 24 hours a day with terrible deeds and atrocities, we spend most of our waking hours similarly worrying that our children and teenagers are OK; feeling guilty that we haven’t rung our ageing parents that day or have shouted too harshly at our teenagers. And we feel huge empathy for those struggling in desperate situations.

I don’t like Boris Johnson much as our Prime Minister, but I do not doubt when the Labour activist Omar Salem accosted him at Whipps Cross hospital over his daughter’s care this week that his first reaction was as a parent not a politician.

Whoever wrote the Guardian editorial mistakenly tried to pit those struggling with dying parents against a man of “privilege” and his dying son. When there is no competition here. One contributor to The Sun wrote in the Spectator this week that Stokes’s reaction to the story about his family, calling its publication “immoral and heartless” and “contemptuous to the feelings and circumstances of my family” was “way over the top”. Really? His mother’s children were murdered. No wonder his reaction has been emotional and they had no reason to publish it other than financial. The years would not have dimmed the horror for his mum.

Ivan died 10 years ago and after the launch of For the Record, he is what my sister and I talked about. A cousin who was present at dinner looked so similar, the familial DNA clearly there in Ivan’s smiling face printed in David’s memoir.

We may be living in a political climate where division between our neighbours is highlighted. But what connects us is far stronger than what separates.

Message overloading is bad manners

Debrett’s has just compiled a guide to online messaging etiquette. It advises against rambling, oversharing other people’s information and ghosting messages. “If you want to end an interaction do so openly but gently, with a brief, polite explanation.”

There’s nothing I can disagree with there. What they don’t tackle is when someone busts into your WhatsApp uninvited. Why does it feel like an invasion of privacy? I discussed this with a friend and we worked out that although people also text you out of the blue it is normally prefaced with an apology. Whereas I find those who pop up in my chat feed do so with zero explanation and their messages are normally faceless. Maybe because WhatsApp is encrypted we feel it is more private: I rarely ghost anyone but sometimes it is necessary. What is a serious disregard of manners is when a person bombards you from every direction. I once passed my number to someone I was meeting for work, to ensure our random coffee shop hook-up went smoothly. Only to have that same person start texting, WhatsApp-ing and leaving comments on my Instagram. It felt akin to when people lean in too close at a party.

At the time silence seemed the solution. Now I can send the Debrett’s guide to make sure they get the message about their overmessaging.