Betty White, Thank You For Being A Friend

LONG ISLAND, NY — When I first heard on New Year's Eve that Betty White had died, at 99, just days short of her much-anticipated 100th birthday, it wasn't from a news alert or a headline. It was from my son, 29, who'd called and mentioned the news during our conversation.

That phone call alone stood as testament to Betty White's inexplicable magic, her ability to win the hearts of generations with that sweet and slightly knowing smile: My son fully admitted that he'd never watched a single episode of "The Golden Girls." Never heard of Allen Ludden, Password host and Betty White's beloved husband. And yet somehow, he was moved by her death, so much so that he called me to talk about it.

"Mom," he said, "she was an icon."

My own journey with Betty White began back in Brooklyn, when "The Golden Girls" aired on Saturday nights on NBC. During those years I was in my 20s, and Saturday nights meant getting dressed up and heading out with friends for long hours spent listening to music and dancing in the highest heels I could muster. It did not mean staying home with my grandmother, to sit on the couch and watch TV.

And yet.

More often than not, I'd find myself delaying the meet-up time with whoever I was planning to join that night so that my grandmother, my beloved Nanny, and I could watch "The Golden Girls." How she loved that show, delighted in Sophia's sly wit, Blanche's Southern belle charm and swarm of suitors, in Dorothy's sarcastic demeanor, cloaking a heart of gold. But it was Rose Nylund's character, played by Betty White, with whom she related most. Rose, like my grandmother, had Norwegian roots, and how Nanny loved hearing Rose's daffy yet endearing tales about St. Olaf. My grandmother laughed at that show in a way I hadn't ever heard her laugh before.

Her life, my grandmother's, hadn't always been easy, left alone with two small children and losing her own mother when they were still so young. She had to go back to work as a secretary at the Hartford Insurance Company and then, later, when my own single mom worked, she became the heart of our home, my person.

Even when I got older, and my sights turned to outside pursuits, when I chose shopping and clubbing with my friends over walks to 86th street or lunches at the soda fountain with Nanny, it was during that half hour when we watched "The Golden Girls" that the bond we would share forever, really, resurfaced. As we watched those four Golden Girls and the enduring friendship they treasured, it spoke to the values my grandmother had worked so hard to instill in me: Loyalty. Compassion. Humor. Grace.

After my son called to tell me that she'd died, I was taken aback. I'd just seen a Tweet by Betty White, about her upcoming 100th birthday and an upcoming article celebrating the event in People magazine.

How can she be gone? I thought. She was all set to mark her big birthday. Crazy at it seems, I honestly had hoped that she would live forever.

The fact that she'd Tweeted, that Betty White somehow had managed to cross that daunting divide and appeal not just to my grandmother's generation, and then to mine, but then again, to so many my son's age and even younger — spoke to not just her talent and her ability to morph with changing times, but to that joyful spirit, that twinkle in her eye that endeared her to us all.

Yes, Betty White had amassed a sea of new followers after her 2010 Super Bowl ad for Snickers. But her original fans, the ones who'd savored her sarcastic one-liners as Sue Ann Nivens on the "Mary Tyler Moore Show," still loved her, too — applauded her work in "Boston Legal", "Hot in Cleveland" and in appearances on "Saturday Night Live" and "The Simpsons", and so many others.

She never stopped working, she'd said in interviews. And maybe that, in its very essence, is what kept us all rooting for her, hoping she'd get the party of a lifetime on her 100th birthday.

For so many of us, Betty White has been a touchstone, a familiar, feisty, spirited actress claiming her place on the canvas of an ever-shifting industry. It takes a tough skin to survive so long in a business not always kind to actresses of a certain age — but coupled with her tenacity was a genuine, tender heart: She and her husband were long known for their legacy of working to protect animals, crusaders in that mission.

During the past years, as we as a world battled a pandemic that's left us weary and often broken, we've all followed Betty White's ability to endure, to conquer, to rise above the travails of time — to pick herself up off that Snickers commercial football field and go on to rally her legions of adoring fans.

It was her resilience, her ability to reinvent and adapt to a changing world, that, I believe, inspired us all.

Betty White, she was forever, during a time where nothing is promised or certain anymore. Even as her fellow "Golden Girls" left us, one by one, Betty White remained. And in her smile, we all saw hope.

For me, she was one of the last links to those Saturday nights with my grandmother. As long as Betty White was alive, I could watch her and say in my heart, to my Nanny, "See, she's still here! I wish you were able to watch this show with me — you'd love seeing Betty White now."

And like the world, I cried Friday to learn that she was gone. To hear that in a year like no other, crippled by pandemic losses and uncertainty, we'd lost one tried-and-true compass, a bright, sparkling force of a woman who could always lead us forward with surety and a smile.

Betty White, I hope when you meet your fellow Golden Girls again, that somewhere you're sitting down together in the grandest of all reunions, sharing a big cheesecake, some raucous laughter, and so much love — together again, at last.

I will miss you forever, Betty White. We all will.