My Best Friend Was Dying. Then She Revealed a Secret She’d Been Keeping for Decades

U.S.NewsPoliticsTechFact CheckSportsGlobalIran WarRussia-UkraineMiddle EastChina And AsiaLive BlogBetter PlanetAll World NewsLifestyleFamily & ParentingEntertainmentTravelPetsAutomotiveRelationshipsScienceHealthPersonal FinanceBetter WorkplacesReaders ChoiceOpinionMy TurnAll OpinionRankingsHealthFinanceProductsEducationWorkplacesCorporate ResponsibilityAll RankingsWatchThe 1600The Royal ReportUnconventionalFrom The PaddockNewsmakersExtraNewslettersDare to DreamEventsEssaysPodcastsVantageInsightsMagazineCEO CircleAnnouncementsLeadershipDev Pragad I have always believed that real love tells the truth. My friend Danza taught me otherwise, a month before her death. It was a warm Friday in March, new cherry blossoms sweetening the air. I sat on the back deck, waiting for our friend Elsie to appear so the three of us, Danza, Elsie and I, could, for one brief interlude, step into the joy of our past high school bubble. Time was running out. Elsie glided up the back steps in cut-off denim shorts and a sleeveless top, looking as if she had stepped straight out of 1969. She bent to hug me. Even in wedge sandals, I barely reached her shoulder. "How do I prepare myself?" she asked, touching the corner of one eye. "She’s still Danza," I said. "Just without hair." "Will I recognize her?" "Without a doubt." My knees went soft. "I’m so glad you’re here." I walked Elsie to the bedroom, closed the door behind me, and went to the kitchen to give the two of them privacy. When I returned, they had both been crying. Elsie sat at the edge of the bed, twisting the corner of the duvet between her long fingers. “Okay chickadee!” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “It’s makeover time!” She reached into her suede purse, removed a small paper bag and set the contents on the bedside table: eyeliner, eye shadow, lipstick, lip liner, face powder, rouge. I had brought scented massage cream and a lavender silk scarf. In high school, we barely wore makeup unless we were on stage, where greasepaint clogged our pores and announced itself days later in embarrassing eruptions across our faces. We were Carole King’s natural women—barefaced, earnest, genuine. Over the years we had graduated to lip color and eyeliner, but the unspoken agreement had never changed: We didn’t perform for each other. Today’s makeover was our stab at normalcy, our attempt to change reality by altering appearances, the way we’d done so many times as teenagers. If we could bring color back to Danza’s face, I thought, maybe we could look away from the hourglass draining beside us. I’d built 25 years of friendship on the idea that Danza and I never needed to fake anything with each other—that whatever else changed, the truth between us wouldn’t. I didn’t yet know how wrong I was. Elsie and I raised the hospital bed until Danza sat upright, head resting against the pillow, eyes closed. Elsie worked like a painter: powder from forehead to chin, two careful blooms of rouge, pale shadow first, then lilac. When she stepped back to study her work, I picked up the sable eyeliner. Danza had taught me how to use it in high school, so it felt right that I draw the line now. I followed the curve of her upper lid and sang, “You make me feel…” At the final words, Danza joined in softly: "…like a natural woman." She continued to hum while I smudged the line on her upper lid with my index finger. "Just like you taught me in high school. It should look casual, not calculated, right?" "Why did you ever take fashion advice from a dork like me?" she asked. "You were a genius when it came to smudging." "A smudging genius. Ha. Ha." Elsie massaged Danza’s hands with the aromatic cream, silver bangles delicately chiming. I drew in eyebrows, eradicated months earlier by chemotherapy. Finally, I outlined and colored her lips a subtle shade of mulberry. We wrapped her bare head in the lavender scarf. Her features came alive: wide smile, standout cheekbones, a perfectly formed mouth, a small, turned-up nose. Danza gazed into a hand-held mirror, her face backlit by the sunny yellow sheets and sky-blue duvet I’d bought her the month before. “Doe-shaped eyes accented by a bald head. Solid fox,” Danza said. She angled her chin and pursed her lips, as if posing for a headshot. The three of us laughed, and for a moment Danza and I were back in our Candy Striper pinafores. While our high school classmates thrived on a colorful mix of drugs, sex and political mayhem, she and I pushed little metal carts up and down the halls of the surgical ward at the hospital on the south side of town. Danza mentioned she’d been at that same hospital earlier in the week. It was a cancer center now. "Remember the pink and white pinafores?" I asked. "Ugh. My legs felt like sausages in those white stockings." "And the pink ribbons in our ponytails. Weren’t we adorable?" Like the sun slumping behind a cloud, Danza’s smile disappeared. “You keep asking me these questions. Why don’t you just come out and ask me the question?” The question? "Danza, what are you talking about?" "It’s not what you’re saying, it’s what you’re not saying." What I’m not saying? I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My voice strained, like it was coming from a distant tunnel. "Danza, do you want to talk?" "Yes," she responded, face hard as stone. Elsie kissed Danza’s cheek, gave me a look and slipped out. "You’re going to hate me," Danza said. "What would make me hate you?" I had arrived too late—after the diagnosis, the hope, the chemicals, the hair loss. Now there was only the final act, and I wasn’t going to waste it. It took half an hour to convince her I could never hate her. "I lied to you," she finally confessed. "About what?" Great actress that she was, she’d stretched the truth a million times before. I braced for another Danza-style invention. "Remember the birthday party I told you I’d planned?" She paused. I waited. "Well, I never did." Of course I remembered. On my 16th birthday, I was home with the flu when she called to say she’d planned a surprise party and was crushed she had to cancel. After winter break, no one mentioned it or gave me a belated gift. I had never lingered over that silence or even wondered about it. Now, 25 years later, I understood: there had been no party. "I wanted to throw a party for you," she said, "but we didn’t have the money." Afternoon sun sliced through the window shades. How blind I’d been, romanticizing her life with a single mother in a one-bedroom apartment while I lived in a six-bedroom house with my siblings and parents. What had looked bohemian to me had been necessity. Now, married to a jazz musician and constantly juggling unpaid bills myself, I understood the shame of struggling financially—and how far a person will go to keep someone she loves from seeing it. I leaned forward. "Danza, it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t give me a party." I kept my gaze on her. "How on Earth could I be mad at you?" I paced the small room, hands jammed into my Levi’s pockets, telling her it wasn’t her fault, that I wasn’t angry, that I could never hate her. I apologized for not having seen what was right in front of me. I told her I loved her and didn’t want her leaving with regret. I pleaded until her makeup stained both of our wet cheeks. When I finally opened the bedroom door, Elsie was on the back deck, leafing through a magazine she hadn’t been reading. I sat beside her on the wooden bench. “I’m so sorry.” "Boy," she said, closing the magazine, "that was rough." I briefly recapped my conversation with Danza. Through my tears, I came to realize that her lie hadn’t been a crack in our friendship, rather it had been evidence of how carefully she’d always tended it. A few minutes later, the hospice nurse knocked. She was small and round, with dark hair and beet-colored cheeks, at once warm and efficient. She checked Danza’s vitals, examined the morphine drip, and asked if we had questions. When she stepped outside, I followed her like a lost puppy and told her about the confession. "It’s not unusual," said the nurse, "for people who are dying to lift out of their morphine haze to clear a past emotional debt. She can be at peace now." Yes. Danza would rest easier. And so would I. For 25 years I had measured our friendship by how much truth we could survive together. Now I knew better. Love’s real test is what a person is willing to carry alone, silently, so someone she loves can be spared the burden. Danza’s silence about my birthday hadn’t been a failure of our friendship. It had been its deepest proof. Megan Vered is a Berkeley, California, native whose personal essays have appeared in HuffPost, Kveller, Writer's Chronicle and more. All views expressed in this article are the author's own. Do you have a personal essay you want to share with Newsweek? Send your story to [email protected]….By Megan Vered0ShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberSee more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.I have always believed that real love tells the truth. My friend Danza taught me otherwise, a month before her death. It was a warm Friday in March, new cherry blossoms sweetening the air. I sat on the back deck, waiting for our friend Elsie to appear so the three of us, Danza, Elsie and I, could, for one brief interlude, step into the joy of our past high school bubble. Time was running out.

Elsie glided up the back steps in cut-off denim shorts and a sleeveless top, looking as if she had stepped straight out of 1969. She bent to hug me. Even in wedge sandals, I barely reached her shoulder.

“How do I prepare myself?” she asked, touching the corner of one eye.

“She’s still Danza,” I said. “Just without hair.”

“Without a doubt.” My knees went soft. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

I walked Elsie to the bedroom, closed the door behind me, and went to the kitchen to give the two of them privacy. When I returned, they had both been crying. Elsie sat at the edge of the bed, twisting the corner of the duvet between her long fingers. “Okay chickadee!” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “It’s makeover time!” She reached into her suede purse, removed a small paper bag and set the contents on the bedside table: eyeliner, eye shadow, lipstick, lip liner, face powder, rouge. I had brought scented massage cream and a lavender silk scarf.

In high school, we barely wore makeup unless we were on stage, where greasepaint clogged our pores and announced itself days later in embarrassing eruptions across our faces. We were Carole King’s natural women—barefaced, earnest, genuine. Over the years we had graduated to lip color and eyeliner, but the unspoken agreement had never changed: We didn’t perform for each other. Today’s makeover was our stab at normalcy, our attempt to change reality by altering appearances, the way we’d done so many times as teenagers.

If we could bring color back to Danza’s face, I thought, maybe we could look away from the hourglass draining beside us. I’d built 25 years of friendship on the idea that Danza and I never needed to fake anything with each other—that whatever else changed, the truth between us wouldn’t. I didn’t yet know how wrong I was.

Elsie and I raised the hospital bed until Danza sat upright, head resting against the pillow, eyes closed. Elsie worked like a painter: powder from forehead to chin, two careful blooms of rouge, pale shadow first, then lilac. When she stepped back to study her work, I picked up the sable eyeliner. Danza had taught me how to use it in high school, so it felt right that I draw the line now. I followed the curve of her upper lid and sang, “You make me feel…”

At the final words, Danza joined in softly: “…like a natural woman.”

She continued to hum while I smudged the line on her upper lid with my index finger. “Just like you taught me in high school. It should look casual, not calculated, right?”

“Why did you ever take fashion advice from a dork like me?” she asked.

“You were a genius when it came to smudging.”

Elsie massaged Danza’s hands with the aromatic cream, silver bangles delicately chiming. I drew in eyebrows, eradicated months earlier by chemotherapy. Finally, I outlined and colored her lips a subtle shade of mulberry. We wrapped her bare head in the lavender scarf. Her features came alive: wide smile, standout cheekbones, a perfectly formed mouth, a small, turned-up nose. Danza gazed into a hand-held mirror, her face backlit by the sunny yellow sheets and sky-blue duvet I’d bought her the month before. “Doe-shaped eyes accented by a bald head. Solid fox,” Danza said. She angled her chin and pursed her lips, as if posing for a headshot.

The three of us laughed, and for a moment Danza and I were back in our Candy Striper pinafores. While our high school classmates thrived on a colorful mix of drugs, sex and political mayhem, she and I pushed little metal carts up and down the halls of the surgical ward at the hospital on the south side of town. Danza mentioned she’d been at that same hospital earlier in the week. It was a cancer center now.

“Remember the pink and white pinafores?” I asked.

“Ugh. My legs felt like sausages in those white stockings.”

“And the pink ribbons in our ponytails. Weren’t we adorable?”

Like the sun slumping behind a cloud, Danza’s smile disappeared. “You keep asking me these questions. Why don’t you just come out and ask me the question?”

The question? “Danza, what are you talking about?”

“It’s not what you’re saying, it’s what you’re not saying.”

What I’m not saying? I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

My voice strained, like it was coming from a distant tunnel. “Danza, do you want to talk?”

“Yes,” she responded, face hard as stone.

Elsie kissed Danza’s cheek, gave me a look and slipped out.

I had arrived too late—after the diagnosis, the hope, the chemicals, the hair loss. Now there was only the final act, and I wasn’t going to waste it. It took half an hour to convince her I could never hate her.

“About what?” Great actress that she was, she’d stretched the truth a million times before. I braced for another Danza-style invention.

“Remember the birthday party I told you I’d planned?” She paused. I waited. “Well, I never did.”

Of course I remembered. On my 16th birthday, I was home with the flu when she called to say she’d planned a surprise party and was crushed she had to cancel. After winter break, no one mentioned it or gave me a belated gift. I had never lingered over that silence or even wondered about it. Now, 25 years later, I understood: there had been no party.

“I wanted to throw a party for you,” she said, “but we didn’t have the money.”

Afternoon sun sliced through the window shades. How blind I’d been, romanticizing her life with a single mother in a one-bedroom apartment while I lived in a six-bedroom house with my siblings and parents. What had looked bohemian to me had been necessity. Now, married to a jazz musician and constantly juggling unpaid bills myself, I understood the shame of struggling financially—and how far a person will go to keep someone she loves from seeing it.

I leaned forward. “Danza, it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t give me a party.” I kept my gaze on her. “How on Earth could I be mad at you?”

I paced the small room, hands jammed into my Levi’s pockets, telling her it wasn’t her fault, that I wasn’t angry, that I could never hate her. I apologized for not having seen what was right in front of me. I told her I loved her and didn’t want her leaving with regret. I pleaded until her makeup stained both of our wet cheeks.

When I finally opened the bedroom door, Elsie was on the back deck, leafing through a magazine she hadn’t been reading. I sat beside her on the wooden bench. “I’m so sorry.”

“Boy,” she said, closing the magazine, “that was rough.”

I briefly recapped my conversation with Danza. Through my tears, I came to realize that her lie hadn’t been a crack in our friendship, rather it had been evidence of how carefully she’d always tended it. A few minutes later, the hospice nurse knocked. She was small and round, with dark hair and beet-colored cheeks, at once warm and efficient. She checked Danza’s vitals, examined the morphine drip, and asked if we had questions. When she stepped outside, I followed her like a lost puppy and told her about the confession.

“It’s not unusual,” said the nurse, “for people who are dying to lift out of their morphine haze to clear a past emotional debt. She can be at peace now.”

Yes. Danza would rest easier. And so would I. For 25 years I had measured our friendship by how much truth we could survive together. Now I knew better. Love’s real test is what a person is willing to carry alone, silently, so someone she loves can be spared the burden. Danza’s silence about my birthday hadn’t been a failure of our friendship. It had been its deepest proof.

Megan Vered is a Berkeley, California, native whose personal essays have appeared in HuffPost, Kveller, Writer’s Chronicle and more.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Do you have a personal essay you want to share with Newsweek? Send your story to [email protected].