Some people are the leading actresses in the movie that is your life. Maybe it’s your girlfriend or spouse. Maybe it’s your bestest of besties. I’ve been blessed to have a few amazing leading actresses make my life better.
Then there are the women just outside that leading role who are no less important to the story that is you. They are the supporting actresses who make your life work better. For me, the Best Supporting Actress of all time is Michelle Nahigian, now Michelle See.
I became friends with Michelle in high school, though I’m not sure exactly how. After all these years, it seems like there was a time we were strangers, and then we were part of the Four Musketeers. It’s funny how that worked out. My high school best friend, Lindy, and I had an odd propensity to date the same girls. At different times, thankfully. To stop that from happening, I started dating his sister. Boom. Checkmate.
Somehow, I managed to thread that needle where my best friend didn’t want to beat the living crap out of me for thinking of his sister in unclean ways. But Lindy didn’t, and him, his sister and I were the other three of the Four Musketeers, once Lindy and Michelle started going out. The four of us did so many amazing things together. There were too many double dates to count.
But it was even before then that Michelle played the most significant role in my life. There was this day in our junior years when I learned some rather unpleasant news and thought that, if things broke the wrong way, I was going to be in big, big trouble with a variety of adults who could make my life miserable for a long time. Not knowing what to do and where to go, I turned to Michelle.
She was home alone when I knocked on her door, cooking or cleaning up the kitchen or something. I remember sitting on the floor in the doorway to her kitchen and lamenting what was happening. Michelle went over to her pantry, got out an unopened bag of chocolate chips and plopped them in my lap. “Here. Eat these. You’ll feel better.”
She was right.
If a life is made of scenes stitched together, there are so many scenes with Michelle that provide the thread. Sitting in my car listening to “Against All Odds” while she tended to a broken heart. Driving to Mystic Seaport the day after junior prom with the other Musketeers and her pretending to be on a call on the brand new invention called a car phone that was in a not-so-small briefcase in the back of my dad’s car. Roller skating. The Z100 party boat (or was it WPLJ?) in front of the Statue of Liberty on the Fourth of July. Hanging out in her basement where her dad had a super-cool jukebox. Watching the amazing run of Jimmy Connors in the U.S. Open in that same basement with a ton of other people cheering him on, though none of us had ever expressed any interest in tennis up until that point and none of us ever expressed any interest in tennis ever again.
Michelle was a great friend to me. Over the years, we’ve seen each other a few times, talked with each other a few more times. One birthday, a huge — and I mean huge — bag of chocolate chips arrived in the mail. It made me smile.
Michelle has a way of doing that to the people in her life … making them smile, making them feel better.
So Michelle, come on down, front and center. This is my Living Eulogy to you. Thank you for being such a great friend to me. Thank you for the laughs and the memories and the chocolate chips. Everyone raise a glass to Michelle!
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