KATHI'S BLUSH

“‘Keep it, I have spares,’ she said, tucking the compact into my bag. Just like a sister would, I thought.”

I introduced myself to Kathi in the fall of 2010, after a basketball-parents meeting at our kids’ suburban Philadelphia high school. She was tan and beautiful and looked like she’d never been sick a day in her life, but her elegant silk headwrap suggested otherwise. “I think I know the road you’re traveling,” I told her, remembering how self-conscious I’d been during chemo three years earlier. My cancer was highly treatable. Kathi’s was stage four.

Being “bright-sided” about cancer bugged us. As Kathi explained, women with metastatic breast cancer never get to ring a bell. Still, at a time when I was a little at sea, feeling disconnected from my pre-cancer life, Kathi laughed and hugged and smiled easily. Her job was helping run a local dentist’s office, but her passion was teaching aerobics and strength classes. We once bumped into a few of her devoted students at a restaurant and it was obvious how much they adored her. 

She was magnetic, a powerhouse, and she and her husband, Stephen, were a perfect match. He was an assistant GM for the Portland Trail Blazers; she was a serious fan and traveled with him when she could. She was well-known in basketball circles and had many, many friends, some of them quite fancy, but she was never cliquey or pretentious. She’d grown up in a small town near State College and never lost her small town–girl’s warmth.

In 2013, my husband and I moved to Connecticut, but Kathi and I stayed close. We texted often, about everything, developing a shorthand for both the happy and the terrifying. When I visited Pennsylvania, we’d have long spill-our-guts dinners, and once or twice a year we’d rendezvous in New York City for marathon catch-ups. She and Stephen had bought a studio there after her diagnosis, and Kathi and I would spend the night. We'd see a Broadway matinee, stroll through Central Park, sip spiked coffees on Columbus Avenue, have dinner at La Esquina. We treated the nights like slumber parties and gabbed accordingly. 

We were at the apartment on a frigid evening in January 2018, joking about the wrinkles that came with being in our 50s, when Kathi looked at me in the mirror, grabbed her go-to Physicians Formula compact and swirled some blush onto my pale cheeks. “Keep it, I have spares,” she said, tucking the compact into my bag. Just like a sister would, I thought. We dashed to dinner, then came back and talked past 3 a.m.—about husbands, kids, my aging mother, our love of beaches and fear of flying, Kathi’s punishing liver-tumor treatments, and Philly’s annual Coaches vs. Cancer gala, where she and Stephen would be that year’s honorees.

The gala was in April. Of course I wore Kathi’s blush. And that night my friend was magnificent, delivering the sparkle as only she could. With Stephen beside her, she stood in front of 500 people and shared her story, exquisitely honest, speaking of hearing the words “stage four” at the very beginning and being frightened every day since. Then she danced her heart out. No one suspected she was suffering such unbearable pain that she feared she might collapse. I didn’t suspect it would be the last time I saw her.

Three months later, my husband and I were in Australia when I heard that Kathi had been hospitalized. I texted immediately to see what was going on. “Tell you about it when you get back,” she answered. “Have the BEST time!” And that was our goodbye. She died in August, 20 days before her 57th birthday. In our final photos, we’re hamming it up at the gala, doing the tango with chins up and arms out, Kathi hugging me extra tight, two friends with no distance between them. Every time I use her blush, I think of us that way, cheek to cheek and heart to heart.

—Rebecca Ridgway Ayars

At the Coaches vs. Cancer gala. Isn‘t she gorgeous?

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Rebecca Ridgway Ayars is working on a collection of essays featuring diva mothers, Polish cabbage rolls and hereditary cancer. A graduate of Princeton, she lives with her husband in coastal Connecticut.

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