One of the Greats

A few months ago, my friend, M, and I were having what I affectionately call with many of my closest friends, “Pop Culture Check-In,” where we download and dish about all our current watches, listens, and reads. As we’d each been watching the most recent season of Hacks, we delighted in how much we enjoy its specific, if filthy, characters and plot lines. At some point, reflecting the two main characters, anti-heroes really, and their constant dance together, toward, and away from each other, M said, “It’s all about a cross-generational, platonic romance, you know?”

The moment M said those words, tears stung the corners of my eyes: Bailey. That is exactly how I would have characterized our relationship.

There are some pairings in this life that just don’t make sense. Even Bailey’s son, Max, said to me one day, “I just don’t get you two. I do not understand this relationship.” I’m not sure I could have described it until now.

I met Bailey Barash in the summer of 2005 my first year at an annual conference / artists gathering I’ve now been attending for twenty years.

Having helped to found the CNN science and medical reporting desks, she had “retired” from CNN, and gone on to become an independent documentary filmmaker. That summer she was screening her new short, “Fried Chicken & Sweet Potato Pie,” about Edna Lewis, a renowned Southern chef who had opened a restaurant in NYC that catered to Southern expats such as Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote.

A few years later, she screened her next film, “The AIDS Chronicles: Here to Represent.” Because of my personal history and connection to the AIDS holocaust, I went up to talk to her after about how meaningful the work was to me. It was the first time (wouldn’t be the last) I saw what I would come to know as Bailey’s…to say self-effacing would be a light touch…deep discomfort with personal attention is more like it.

When I moved to Atlanta in 2008, I found myself in a temporary housing gap. Synchronicity in the universe, Bailey put out on a listserv that she and her husband were looking for a house and dog sitter for nearly the exact same period. I wrote to tell them I was interested in the gig–could I move my bedroom furniture into their living room for the month?

That was the proper beginning of our friendship. I started house and dog sitting for Bailey & Don for a month a year (and weekends here and there), going to stay with their dear, sweet Bella at their lovely home so they could have adventures all over the world, especially to Bailey’s beloved Hawai’i.

In 2012, after a break-up had led me to pack on some pounds, and I was in the doldrums with Seasonal Affective Disorder, I made a post that I was looking to move my butt with more intention. Bailey responded that too would like to have some more accountability in this department. Together, we joined a gym.

Now, let me tell you, Bailey was 34 years older than me, but she could work out harder and walk faster than I ever thought about trying to. She swore the walking part came from all those years being a female journalist at CNN, where you constantly had to prove yourself and lug your own equipment. I was always struck by how Bailey made working out look equally torturous and pleasurable at the same time. She would put in her headphones, get on an eliptical machine, and just plow away, sweat dripping, eyes closed, listening to whatever random music selection–and I mean random!–mouthing the words unconsciously. “What were you listening to today?” I’d ask as we left the gym. “Oh, I just love that song, ‘Rich Girl’ by Hall & Oates,” she’d reply. Or, “I can’t get enough of OutKast.”

If we had a little more time, perhaps one of us just needed to talk, we’d go for a walk. I wrote a post years ago in homage to our walks where Bailey always said, no matter what, it was perfect walking weather.

We definitely had our own version of “Pop Culture Check-In.” Bailey loved books, was always on the hunt for free or cheap ones from her favorite thrift shop (where she also loved looking for leather purses). She would regale me with stories from her days at CNN, her childhood, what her family was up to these days. Often times when we were getting ready to part ways, she would describe the elaborate salad she was going to go home and make. Listening to Bailey describe a meal she was planning to create–let alone getting to eat her cooking–was like getting to hear David Byrne talk about his process. To say that woman loved her food is an understatement.

Bailey and I had a lot of dreams to travel together, although we only got to take a few trips–one small trip to Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington, NC in 2013, and one major trip to Seattle in 2014. The following year, we were supposed to go to New England. The trip was fully booked when Bailey called me up at work about a month before: “I have fucking colon cancer!” If it hadn’t been so drastic, I would have found her righteous indignation hilarious. She was so pissed because she’d been working so hard at being healthy for so long. Surgery removed I can’t event remember how many feet of her bowel, but it took a lot out of Bailey, not just physically.

Eventually, though, she resumed gym time. During Trump 1.0, she’d come harumph-ing into Snap Fitness, spitting mad about this, that, or the other news item, undone by the latest atrocities. She got back to her travels, heading to Southeast Asia, and even returning to Australia where she’d been as a Fulbright Scholar as a young person.

There were times when I found Bailey absolutely infuriating. I don’t love this about myself. She was one of those “if you’re not ten minutes early, then you’re late” kinda people. I’m more of a “right on time” (maybe even pushing it to maybe a minute or two late) folks. Whenever we were to meet up for a walk, there she’d be, standing on the corner, serenely waiting. It’s not like she would even be tapping her foot. Not judging. She said it was because she never trusted traffic. Still, I projected my internal judgment of myself that I could almost never seem to beat her anywhere.

She was also one of the most literal people I’ve ever known, hated sarcasm. You really had to spell things out with Bailey. While I’ve come to appreciate in my adulthood that direct communication, not being wishy-washy or beating around the bush is generally the better way to go, learning how to interact with my friend who was so very blunt and only ever knew how to look you directly in the eye with the most earnestness was a journey.

We didn’t speak for three months a few years ago. I got busy and a little stubborn because she always relied on me to be the first to call. Seems that during that time she’d passed out and had been taken to the hospital by ambulance. When we finally reconnected and went on a walk, as she told me about the malady she’d been through, I suddenly stopped walking, looked her in the eye and said, “I am so pissed at you right now.” She blinked, “Why?” “If this were me, telling you this story, would it not hurt your feelings that I hadn’t called you to tell you that something was wrong? I mean, you are one of the emergency contacts in my phone!” We never could come to an agreement about this.

We had a lot of places that rubbed up against each other in discomfort. As an old school journalist, Bailey did not completely understand my work and mission with personal storytelling. It may have come from that early outright allergy she had to personally never wanting to be the center of attention. It was certainly informed by her fundamental belief that stories should be filtered through, vetted by a professional lens. But we knocked heads on more than one occasion about the core tenet of people telling their own personal stories. Still, Bailey was one of my fiercest supporters. She always donated to my campaigns, tried to help me problem-solve and find new strategies for new clients, and no matter what, she just believed in me as a person and a woman business owner.

Fall 2023, I got yet another one of those calls. This time it was from Max, her son. Bailey wasn’t yet up to talking to me directly. This time, the diagnosis was even more dire: pancreatic cancer. All of us knew that the hourglass had been knocked over, the sand was spilling out fast.

Ever dedicated to science and medicine, Bailey opted to participate in a clinical research trial in her final year. I don’t think she really had hope it would do her much good, but she was deeply dedicated to the expansion of human knowledge. As her friend, it was frankly miserable to watch. I wanted her to get out, travel more, go back to Hawai’i, be less uncomfortable, go for the good drugs.

We took one last trip together. In July 2024, I drove her to Knoxville so she could spend some time with one of her brothers. This is another one of those places where I found Bailey frustrating. She got so absorbed in her phone. It bleeped and blinged so loudly all. the. time. It’s just the way with a lot of older folks. Still, there we’d be, out driving on a beautiful day, big puffy clouds hanging in the sky over rolling green hills, and Bailey could not stop with her phone. She answered every call, every text, just in case it was a doctor or an insurance company. I came to recognize the thing–as it rises up in all of us–the anxiety, the inability to be present with reality, how easy to let the device become a real vice. And I had to learn to forgive myself for being angry with her. It was really just my sadness for what was to come being masked behind that anger. Perhaps that’s what years of my frustration with Bailey had been, a foreshadowing that eventually she would break my heart. Of course, I never said much of anything about any of this to her. I’m a person who stuffs down most conflict. We all have our own vices and ways of being in the world.

The last few months were hard to watch; she slowly diminished. We all took turns taking her to treatments, but eventually it became clear that it was time for those to stop because her body was wrecked, her love of food was gone, jogging pants falling off her skeletal frame. This vibrant, feisty human who’d done a lot of work about grief and dying, who’d even made a documentary about hospice, in the end, wasn’t ready to go.

The last time I saw Bailey (that she was still conscious, still herself), she was doing her taxes–because she didn’t want anyone else to do them. She told me a story about a time in high school she’d heard sarcasm, how much it had confused her, how the person who’d used it on her had made fun of her for not understanding. As I was getting ready to leave, I said, “I think it’s gonna snow Friday.” “Great,” she returned flatly, not looking up from her taxes. I slowly backed up, turned back. “Bailey, was that sarcasm?” “I think I finally got it,” she said, a little turn to her lips.

The last time I saw Bailey when she was in the liminal space, I rubbed her feet with olive oil and my tears like some Biblical character. Thankful she wasn’t really present to witness it, I cried for all my regrets. Regrets of not having ever taken the time to go with her to Hawai’i because I was too busy and too broke. Regrets for letting myself get so frustrated with her. Regrets for not having made a map of all the places in the world she’d been. Maybe this is just what we do when someone is dying. Regret is an easier emotion to sit with because we feel like there’s something we can control somehow–if only I had done something differently–rather than just the aching maw of sadness.

She left us on January 20, 2025, Inauguration Day, an irony not lost on most of us. It felt like her final protest, like she dropped the mic and said, “I’m out. I’m not doing this again.”

I had the distinct privilege of writing Bailey’s obituary, an opportunity for which I will forever be grateful, not to mention hosting her memorial service a month later. Still to come, I really hope to put together a film festival of her work. As I’ve said many times, all that attention would have killed her, if she wasn’t already dead.

Look, I don’t know if we get only but so many great loves in our life. I hope not. I’m still searching for the one that would like to be my lifelong dance partner. But I’m counting this one, my cross-generational platonic romance, as one of the greats.

Thanks for reading.