CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: IT'S NOT EASY TO FORGET WEEK WORLD LOST DI, MOTHER TERESA

My young friend Katie, like millions of others, suffered a double blow with the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Theresa.

She and her mother called me Friday night to discuss the women's deaths, and more importantly, their lives.

Katie attends an all-girl Catholic school.

Her mother, Sharon, went to pick her up from school Friday and found herself surrounded by dozens of sobbing little girls in plaid jumpers, all heartbroken that their heroine, and a symbol of living sainthood, had died.

"Sister Michaela says she's in heaven now, so I guess it's all right," Katie, who just turned 8, told me. She was doing her best to sound convinced.

I did my best to persuade her that Sister Michaela, the principal at Katie's school, should know.

Sharon, who alternated between my best and second-best friend all through grade school, was upset for her daughter and, on her own account, saddened by the death of Princess Di.

"She was so young," Sharon wailed.

I have to admit, I liked her better after the divorce and was more than a little annoyed by my fellow Americans' obsession with her. But it's hard to deny the good works she did.

Even as I scanned wire copy and surfed the Internet for more details on the chauffeur's blood alcohol level or just how callous the paparazzi had actually been, I couldn't help but wonder exactly how relieved the royal family was to know that Diana would no longer be shadowing the monarchy.

Of course, in death she's managed to overshadow an institution that has survived and in fact defined centuries by the simple virtue of being a nice young woman with a wonderful smile and an innate warmth for those in need.

And even here in the newsroom, where we pride ourselves on being tough, few eyes stayed dry at the sight of the two little princes in the funeral procession.

It won't be easy to forget the week the world lost two distinguished women: one who defined glamour in spite of her charity, and one who, because of her overwhelming compassion, never needed glamour.

I've long sneered at the paparazzi and tabloid journalism; pandering to a public hungry for scandal is no way for a respectable adult to make a living, the Ethical Journalist in my head reminds me.

But by the same token, I've long been fed up with celebrities who spend every waking moment working at becoming famous and then complain because they have no privacy.

Diana didn't become famous by choice; she married into it. Mother Theresa was so busy working with the people the rest of us prefer not to see that she never had time to notice the cameras.

Both learned to use the media to advance their causes, and since their causes were so right, I have no quarrel with that.

I can't say I'm particularly proud of being associated with the photographers who chased Diana into the tunnel; journalists are supposed to cover death, not contribute to it.

But right or wrong, the media shape our deaths as surely as they shape our lives; perhaps, after hounding Diana throughout her life, we can at least make sure she's remembered well in death.

I take some comfort in that thought.

And I take greater comfort, Katie, in knowing that Sister Michaela was right.

Peggy O'Farrell is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.