May videos

The last time I went to see my best friend May, I did her makeup before she recorded videos for my kids. It wasn’t an unfamiliar thing to do. We did so much theater together when we were little, and we were always getting ready for something: costumes, hair, makeup, waiting backstage. We were little girls and everything about it felt important. We grew up and did a million other things together, but those theater years are still such a clear part of my memory of us. So there I was, doing her makeup again, except this time she was very sick and we were getting ready to record videos for my children.

She was saying goodbye to them. She knew she wouldn’t be there for all the things that were still coming, and she wanted them to have something from her. We set up my phone and she started talking to them, completely off the cuff. She absolutely nailed it. She talked about the things she loved about each of them, the things she was proud of, the things that made them funny and wonderful to her. She knew exactly what she wanted to say because she had this whole collection of things about each of them that she noticed and loved. She didn’t need to write it down.

I was sitting there listening to her talk to my kids while thinking about all the versions of us who had gotten ready together before. There were 35 years between those little girls and the two of us sitting in that room, and somehow I was still sitting beside her while she got ready to do something important. But this time the important thing was saying goodbye.

She was so tired by then. She had very little energy, and even talking for very long could wear her out, but she wanted to make these videos. She wanted my kids to hear her voice and to know how much she loved them. She wanted to tell them what she saw in them, what she was proud of, what made her laugh, what she thought was wonderful about them. She knew they would grow up without her and that there would be things she would never get to see, so she gave them what she could while she was still here.

For me, the videos will always have the makeup attached to them, and quickly that took me back 35 years, through every phase of our friendship. We did not know then how many things we would do together, or how many versions of ourselves we would become, or how many things we would have to get ready for, or that one day we would be sitting together while one of us prepared to leave something behind for the other one’s children.

She did it perfectly. And then we were done. I had done her makeup, she had made the videos, and there was nothing else to get ready for.