Introducing Never Happier

By Liz McDaniel

On Christmas Eve of 2022, my best friend, Kate, shared the news that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Stage 4. She swiftly set her terms around the way she wanted to face it. Head on and with no shortage of dark humor. Her signature British way. There would be no breaking down and crying, no dramatics. The few days after she told me were the hardest. For the first time in our long friendship, I typed and re-typed texts. The stream of consciousness chain between us felt broken. I was terrified of saying the wrong thing or that I simply couldn’t do it her way. I could not, would not, make jokes about her dying of cancer. Until, of course, for her sake, I learned to make jokes about her dying of cancer. I started a running list called Bad Cancer Jokes. I texted her whenever I thought of a new one. Her favorite: Be honest. Who do you think will need more drugs to get through this? You or me?

In the nine months between Kate’s diagnosis and the day she took her last earthly breath, she gave me a masterclass in grace and dignity and courage and seeing the beauty in every last heartbreaking thing. “Who knew I would be so good at dying?” she would joke.  And she was. But, for the record, she was much better at living.

The day after she died, I received a text from her husband, Liam, that she wanted me to write and deliver a eulogy at her memorial. This gutted me, one, because I could not imagine uttering a single coherent sentence through the pain I was in, and two, because I knew that even with that final gesture she was trying to remind me of something she had said so many times before, You’re a writer. You need to write. But since she died just over one year ago, other than that last and most difficult assignment, I haven’t really been able to do it. The blank page was too painful a reminder of her absence. I stopped pitching the book I was trying so hard to sell before she died. I haven’t even looked at it. The prospect that I might finally get an agent without being able to call her immediately. Or publish a book without her being able to hold it in her hands or host the party she always talked about. Too devastating to even comprehend. Ever since we met, she has been my biggest supporter and I wrote everything with her in mind as the reader. I wrote to make her laugh and cry and to have her say, “There you go with that light and dark stuff again.” It took me some time to realize that I can still write for her.

So, for Kateski, here we go. 

I am not sure what precise form this newsletter will take, but I know that I want it to feel like what Kate called our “Never Happier” moments. This is the moment you’ve just gathered around a table with your closest friends, the first drinks and “nibbles,” set before you, and there is a collective exhale filled with knowing that, for a few hours, you are free to tell the truth about anything and everything. That is really what I have been drawn to throughout my career as a human, as a writer, as a friend: women telling the truth about their lives. There is so much power in that simple act. And it is needed now more than ever. 

So, here, I’ll tell the truth about whatever the thing is, and I’ll serve it alongside weekly “Nibbles” that might be a book I am reading, something that left me enraged (hello, Matt Gaetz!?), a burger I can’t stop thinking about (there is often a burger I can’t stop thinking about), or my new favorite jeans. Hopefully, I’ll convince some women I admire to talk to me about the truth of their lives. Life, books, food, fashion: only the essentials. 

But first, I leave you with the words I left Kate with as I delivered a eulogy at her memorial on Manhattan’s Upper West Side last October. This was all followed by a great party with delicious food in a space Kate would have declared, “Very Sex and the City.” She would have beelined to the bar for a glass of a big, feisty red, said “Oh, yes, please,” to the first hors d'oeuvres that crossed her path. She would have raised her glass and said, “Never Happier.” 

*****

Hi, I’m Liz and of course we are all here because we are lucky enough to know and adore Kate. But that’s not the only thing we have in common. We also share a debt of gratitude to you, Liam, for how you loved Kate, for the extraordinary care you have taken, of Kate and of all of us on her behalf. It has been a beautiful thing to witness and I know she would want you, and everyone here, to know that she could not have asked for more. 

Now, Kate would also want everyone here to know that her wedding dress was brown. She would want me to establish that fact before going any further. Even if you’ve heard it before. Especially if you’ve heard it before, she would want me to remind you that her wedding dress was brown. Not white. Because Kate was not the least bit interested in what was expected, in symmetry or perfection or anything of that nature. I can hear her now…boring! 

Kate was interested in people, in her friends, in her family, in everyone here today, because she inherently understood, even relished in the fact, that people are by nature asymmetrical, imperfect, flawed. She knew this about all of us. And she loved us for it. 

Kate and I met many years ago, the day we both started work at a fancy fashion house. I was twenty-nine and knew very little—about the job that I was hired to do, or anything really. Kate had joined as Digital Director after an established career in the agency world in London and she knew a lot—about the job that she was hired to do, and everything really. (Though she did keep an aol email address which we all agreed was strange for a digital director.) Anyway, the night before I started the job, I celebrated over champagne, as one does, and as I was tucking my passport into my purse in preparation for the next day, I hit the corner of my brow on a metal chair in my tiny apartment, a deep cut that, unfortunately, required a large band-aid plastered across my head on my first day. As I was introduced to my new colleagues, I watched as they all looked away from the band-aid, avoiding eye contact. Too awkward. Too risky to mention. Not one person asked. That is until I made my way into the cubicle closest to my desk, where a chic woman with cropped blonde hair took one look at me and said in an impossibly cool British accent, “What the hell happened to your head?” 

Kate, of course, went straight to the wound, straight to the story. And after work, we went straight to the bar at The Standard. The rest, as they say, is history. 

That night, I now realize, was our first “Never Happier” moment. This is the moment after the first "nibble" had been set before us, when Kate would survey the scene—inevitably a table at a very in-demand restaurant she had to set her calendar to get—she really was a ninja when it came to reservations. Anyway, she would take it all in, the friends gathered, whatever occasion or non-occasion we were celebrating, then close her eyes and lift both of her hands and say, “Never happier.”

Over time, more than a decade, and countless dinners and drinks and big bodied reds, over birthdays she organized and wedding showers she hosted and girl trips she gamely joined, Kate never looked away from the band-aid. She never shied away from the truth. She went straight there. With herself, with her friends, with strangers on the street, dogs she met in the park. She was radically empathetic. You knew, at all times, that she understood how you were feeling, that she validated whatever that feeling was, that she felt it herself on your behalf. (Was there anything more satisfying than seeing Kate go into a full-on rage against someone with whom you expressed mild annoyance?) Kate was the friend you wanted around in difficult times, but she was also the first to celebrate when things were going well. She was your biggest cheerleader. To hear Kate tell it, every single person here is at the very top of whatever field we are in. We’ve been recently promoted to the absolute head of it all and are on “f-off money,” so congratulations to all of us on our unrivaled achievements! We are also, of course, a little bit nuts.

But, really, this is how Kate saw the people she loved, the world. Flawed and beautiful. She held those two things at once, always, and as her friend, that meant that you brought your full self, your neuroses, your stream of consciousness texts, your happy news, your petty grudges, your fears, she held it all. 

There’s a Fitzgerald quote I have always loved: “The test of a first rate-intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Never was Kate’s intelligence more obvious than toward the end of her life. The way that she held life and death at the same time, for all of us. When the weight of those two things, the fact of what we stood to lose got heavy, she held it. With humor and grace, she held it.

She held it when I sat with her during chemotherapy and she made everyone around her laugh. “I have to warn you in advance,” she told the nurse. “We’ve been kicked out of a lot of places.” As we were leaving, she looked squarely at the lady sitting behind the reception desk and said, “We’ve drunk at better bars than this, but thank you!” 

She held it as she insisted on feeding everyone who crossed her threshold in the past year, and feeding them well.

She held it this summer when she, Cress, and I, were driving upstate to meet friends for the weekend. On the ride up, it was pouring rain and the circumstances were what they were and we were stuck in traffic below an underpass somewhere in Queens. I can tell you that in this precise moment, I was not overwhelmed by the beauty of it. But Kate, from her perch in the back seat, looked at Cress and I, smiling wide, and said in the way that she had of talking that could sound like singing, I am loving this! 

Cress and I both laughed at the absurdity of the statement but the beauty of that moment was suddenly revealed. We were all together. Kate was smiling and grateful and holding two things that we could not yet.  

And isn’t that we all are tasked with today? Holding two opposing ideas. A brown wedding dress. That first drink at The Standard and the last time I hugged her. Feeding your friends while you are starving. Deep belly laughter in a chemotherapy room. A breathtaking underpass somewhere in Queens. All those Never Happier moments and a day like today. Gratitude and grief. Light and dark. What we’ve lost and everything she gave us that we get to keep.  

These are the opposing ideas we all have to hold today.

Kate knew this, of course, so she showed us how. 

So thank you for that, Kateski, and for all of it.

Rest well, lady. 

*****

I hope that gives you at least a glimpse of how good Kate was at living and of the feisty spirit that I will honor in this space. 

This is Never Happier. And I’m glad you’re here. 

xx,

Liz

P.S. Maybe one day I’ll decide to offer paid subscriptions but for now, if you’re so inclined, please consider donating to Kate’s charity of choice, Animal Care Centers of New York.