Time For Option B

When Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg’s husband died suddenly, her world fell apart. She reveals to Decca Aitkenhead what this tragic loss taught her – and how she went about putting her life back together

- Decca Aitkenhead

THEY were just three words, but little did Sheryl Sandberg know they would be the last thing she’d ever say to her husband. “I’m falling asleep,” she told him, oblivious to the imminence of tragedy, as she curled up on a cushion for a nap.

It was Friday, 1 May 2015. She and Dave Goldberg (47) had left their two children at home with her parents in California and flown to Mexico for a weekend break to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday. They were Silicon Valley royalty’s power couple: he the CEO of a tech company, Survey Monkey, worth more than $1 billion (then R15,5 billion); she the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of global bestseller Lean In, a feminist call to arms for working women to emulate the self-belief and ambition of men.

Sheryl had featured on Forbes’ list of the most powerful women on the planet, served as chief of staff to the Treasury secretary in Bill Clinton’s government, been widely tipped as a future member of a Hillary Clinton cabinet and earned a personal fortune well in excess of $1 billion. At 45 she was mother to a 10-year old son and seven-year-old daughter; weekends away were rare and precious. No wonder she was tired. She fell asleep that afternoon a happily married wife, and woke up an hour later a widow.

When she didn’t see her husband of 11 years, she at first thought nothing of it and joined her friends for a swim. She took a shower, spoke to their son on the phone and dressed for dinner. It was only when she rejoined the group on the beach and realised no one had seen Dave for hours that panic set in. Racing to the resort gym, she found him lying on his back, his face blue, a pool of blood around his head. She performed frantic CPR, an ambulance rushed him to hospital, but it was too late. He’d suffered a fatal heart attack. Sandberg flew home that evening to tell her children their father had died.