My iPhone is a bit like me.

Between 2009 and 2011, it’s taken a battering. Accident-prone, I’ve dropped it repeatedly, it’s gone under the wheels of a car twice and even slid down a plane on a turbulent Ryanair flight from Stansted to Alghero.

We’re both bruised and scarred, and we’ve both seen better days, yet we’re doggedly clinging on.

The screen of my iPhone 3 is so cracked - twenty zigzagging lines at the last count this morning - that it’s started to resemble crazy paving. As for the keypad, it’s all but obliterated. Now that I have to resort to touch typing, imagining where the letters or numbers might be, I realise that keeping the phone in my jeans pocket and then sitting on it for the best part of three hours was probably not my brightest moment. My dad could probably add others.

Not a day goes by without at least five people looking at my phone and exclaiming “Geez, that one’s had it. Not even God could repair that” or “Been in the wars, then? When are you going to replace it?”

For eleven months, I’ve replied with conviction that I’m off to the shop at the weekend to get a new one and for eleven months, I haven’t. It’s not that I don’t go. I do. I’ve spent hours online and in store weighing up the pros and cons of the Galaxy SII and the iPhone 4 and then, more recently, the SIII and the iPhone 4s. I’ve read the reviews, I’ve pored over the technical aspects and I’ve studied the deals from the network providers in so much detail that I could make them my specialist subject on Mastermind.

Recently, I’ve been as confused as anyone as to why I haven’t hurled my iPhone in the bin and gone out and got myself a new one. While I’m a meticulous planner when it comes to my career, for everything else I live in the moment.

And then, at midnight on Saturday, the reason for my stubborn resistance became clear.

‘Gratenans birthday – Parckstone (sic)’ flashed up on my phone’s screen, reminding me that Sunday would have been her 87th birthday if she hadn’t died of cancer last June, less than a month after the diagnosis.

Briefly, I smiled at the memory of my nan before trying to wipe away that the tears that were silently rolling down my face and hold back the noisy sobs that were threatening to erupt.

I wasn’t crying because I’d lost my grandmother who’d meant everything to me. On the morning she died, I walked into her makeshift bedroom in her sitting room, drew back the curtains to let in the sun, opened the windows, listened to the birdsong and remembered a life well-lived.

No. I was crying because I’d been transported back to the day of Matt’s funeral. It was a sunny April morning and we were sitting in the back garden of his cottage when my five-year-old niece commandeered my iPhone. Of her own accord, she and her big sister (a bit of a misnomer, there’s only 16 months between them) decided to input everyone’s birthday into the calendar.

Next up, was the entry for January 8: ‘Daddys birtthday – home hevan (sic)’. As I was struggling to maintain my composure, the next question floored me.

“What do I write for my birthday?” whispered my oldest niece, climbing onto my lap. “I can’t write anything.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, pulling her closer and stroking her fine, blonde hair.

“Because daddy always takes me to the pub for my birthday. And now he can’t. I don’t want to go by myself. And I don’t think they’d let me sit there alone.

“Plus, Auntie Emma, I can’t go to heaven, can I?”

For a moment we sat there in silence, both of us absorbing the reality of the situation we were in. My brother was dead and he wasn’t coming back. In less than four hours’ time, we would be burying him among the wildflowers in the village churchyard.

“You’re right, poppet, you can’t. But why don’t we put the pub anyway?” I suggested. “Perhaps you could go with your mum or nanny and granddad.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It won’t be the same.”

I knew she was suffering because earlier that morning I’d come across her secret diary which she’d started the previous week when she learnt her dad had hanged himself. Reading how confused, sad and angry she was in her seven-year-old words was heartbreaking.

And, unfortunately, there was nothing I could say to make it better.

Like the cracks on my iPhone, I could replace the screen but it’s purely cosmetic. If you turn over the phone you’ll see the damage has already been done. That applied as much to my niece on April 8, 2009 as it does to me now.

I have been taking tiny steps of progress, though. The friends I criticised last week for being verbally vicious and not pulling their weight got even more vicious because they were incensed that I had dared to shame them here.

In the past, I would have retaliated or, at the very least, have felt the need to defend myself but I’m beyond caring about their guilty consciences. I no longer have the energy to worry about them worrying about anonymously looking bad in print.

Instead, I’ve cancelled them from my life. I’ve defriended them on Facebook, removed them from my email contacts and deleted their names and numbers on my phone.

And, once it was done, all I could feel was relief.

From there, I realised an all-round declutter was long overdue. On my nan’s birthday, I chucked out clothes, gave away books and finally threw away the sympathy cards that were taking up too much room on the shelf in the spare room.

As for my iPhone, I think you know the answer: I’m off to the shop at the weekend.

Sponsorship for The Big Em and M Challenge is now at £925. Please help bereaved children like my nieces and nephew by donating here .