Chapter 5: I Miss You Every Day

The blue light from the laptop cut through the darkness, bathing Courteney Cox in its glow. The document currently tabbed open on her screen, she had read and re-read so many times, she had practically memorized it. The statement had landed in her in-box the Monday morning after his death, all ready for her and the others' signature. She had put her name to it electronically, through DocuSign (Schwimmer had suggested that as an efficient method – he was into technology stuff like that. It was very Ross, in a way).

Approving the words had been easy. After all, they had been eloquent and had said everything that needed to be said – really, that could be said – as the initial shock had begun to settle.

Most importantly: the words weren't hers:

We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just castmates. We are a family. There is so much to say, but right now we're going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss. In time, we will say more, as and when we are able. For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty, his friends and everyone who loved him around the world.

Five sentences, saying just enough to essentially buy them all some time.

That had been a little more than two weeks ago. And as far as she could see, the others had yet to move on finding words of their own.

It was as if everyone expected for someone to sound off first – someone who wasn't them. In achieving this insight, Courteney had come to realize, with fear, that that someone who everyone expected to go first was her. Schwimmer, LeBlanc, Jenny – they were all waiting for her to make the first move.

And why wouldn't they expect that of her? After all, she had been the closest thing Matty had had to a wife, as Suzanne had worded it to her at the funeral. She had been the one who was closest with him – she recalled Matty admitting as much in an interview once. More to the point, Courteney was a leader – she had been seen as the leader of the group, the den mother, because that was the dynamic she had insisted on from the very first day they had met for rehearsal nearly three decades ago. She could have insisted she was the star, given that she had had more established credentials than any of the others at that time (I danced with Bruce Springsteen! I dated Michael Keaton! I made out with Michael J. Fox on Family Ties! Of course I'm the star!) and yet she hadn't. It was she who had set the tone decreeing that Friends be an ensemble cast.

She had been the mother of the group. Or, to borrow a phrase from her beloved Chandler, "She's a mother…. without a baby." (At least at that time). So, Courteney had made all of the others her babies, Matty more than most, especially after everyone had found out that he was ill. The injured baby bird. The… how had Matty phrased it, in his book? Something about when a penguin is injured in nature, the other penguins prop it up.

The statement penned by the producers rang true: there was so much to say. Only what to say? How to find the words? How to express adequately everything that this man had meant to her? How he had shaped her life.

Tears began to pool, clinging stubbornly to her lashes, yet Courteney refused to let them fall. It unnerved her a little, to know how much she had cried, and was still crying. She had thought – naively, it was clear – that after nearly three weeks, she would be all cried out by now. It was bad enough to be aware of how much she had cried where others could see. The looks the other fi- four, she corrected herself, even as a spasm went through her chest at such blasphemy – had given her, at the funeral, and in other moments of shared consoling on FaceTime: sympathy. But just as much mixed in with that, a kind of curiosity. Curiosity that didn't quite rise to the level of…. suspicion, but nevertheless belied the kind of inquisitiveness where one was clearly trying to figure something out. Take something nebulous and sort it into a definable category.

Courteney took a deep, cleansing breath, tear tracks blazing down both sides of her face.

"You are such an enigma, you know that?" The words echoed through the empty, cavernous living room. There was no answer, and it almost frustrated her that she had actually been expecting one. She could practically write his response, what he would have said. She could almost hear him, talking in her head:

"Who, me? …. Well, that's what my mom said when I came popping out of the womb. …"

"Can you hear me?" Courteney whimpered, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, her gaze going heavenward.

Wherever he was, her deepest fear now lay in the unanswered question, the unknowables: was he happy, wherever he was now? Or was he scared? Did he even know he was dead? Did he feel sadness or pain at being separated from his loved ones? These queries wrestled with Courteney, tortured her. She knew what she believed, having gone through the loss of both her parents; still… she couldn't stand not knowing. Some kind of sign would be nice.

Unbidden, she found her mind wandering back to a moment from little more than a quarter of a century earlier. To a happy memory that filled her body with warmth and laughter and joy…

FLASHBACK – Early 1998

"I'M GETTING MARRIED TODAY!" Ross burst into the hotel room.

Chandler, striking a nonchalant pose in the bed, smiled casually. "Morning, Ross."

"I'M GETTING MARRIED – TO-DAY! YAHOO!" Ross backed up and shut the door as quickly as he'd appeared.

A beat, and then Monica popped up from under the covers. "Do you think he knew I was here?!"

By now, with almost four seasons under their belt, the group had learned to expect certain reactions from certain moments in the show. For the most exciting and unexpected ones, anticipate sustained applause, or even whoops that were guaranteed to last a few seconds – four or five at the most.

The moment now – of Monica appearing in Chandler's bed – achieved all of those reactions and more. Courteney waited for the sound to die down before continuing with the rest of the scene.

And she waited. …. And waited. Except the applause, the cheering, didn't die down after five seconds. Or ten. Or fifteen. Or twenty.

It was more like nearly thirty seconds – an eternity in performing (the producers later would tell Courteney and Matthew that they had timed the hoopla at a whopping 27 seconds). 27 seconds of the roar of approval from the audience sounding like a jet engine. Underneath the flood of the studio lights, she and Matthew couldn't see the audience's reaction.

But they could hear it. And feel it. The celebration reverberated with all the tectonic shifting of an earthquake. So there the pair remained, frozen in the bed, practically in each other's arms. They weren't touching, under the covers, but they were actually naked. Being the professionals they were, neither one of them had looked at each other getting into bed before they rolled – latex body suits hadn't existed back then, for intimacy scenes.

When it felt like the insanity was finally starting to ebb, Courteney turned to Matthew. "OK, now you." She moved to yank the covers up over both of them, shifting towards him a little in a way that implied she was about to perform…. and on him….

It left her bemused at how fervently the audience actually shrieked, screamed assent.

"No, no, no!" She laughed, turning back, her smile luminous as she broke the fourth wall. She figured that the audience had ruined the take already anyway. "He told me to say it! He did!"

Matthew had an adorably bashful smile on his face. The crew signaled to them that they were going to try for another take. Re-set, and not just to take it from the top. Re-set for a whole new studio audience.

As they waited, hidden under the covers, Matthew and Courteney shared cheeky grins, ever careful to keep their eyes from wandering away from each other's faces.

Though from his dimpled smirk, it was obvious Matty was tempted, and Courteney felt herself blush down to her chest.

"Don't you dare," she warned him, though she was grinning. "My fiancé will punch out your lights."

It galled her when Matthew just snorted. "Right. Sure. I'm pretty sure your fiancé wouldn't know how to spell punch, let alone how to throw one."

It was just the sort of politically incorrect, if not exactly off-color, joke he was known for – one that weaker individuals might have interpreted as crossing a line. Yet Courteney knew the man well enough by now that her tolerance for his zany brand of humor had expanded such that his crack about her intended danced right up to her own personal line without going over.

In the meantime, the TV bed-partners lay hidden under the hotel bed covers, sharing crazed grins as the next studio audience was hustled in.

They ultimately had to shoot that eventually iconic moment three different times, including once without any studio audience at all just to get what they needed.

END OF FLASHBACK

Courteney was sharply lifted out of the memory, remembering that magical night of filming, as she got the sense that she was being watched.

Setting her laptop aside, she rose shakily from the couch, glancing about the darkened space that was her living room. "Hello?..." Silence. "…. I know someone's there! Who are you?"

No answer, for a moment. But then –

There was an answer, of a sort. Not in anything spoken. No, rather in a feeling. Despite her nerves, the warmth that had bloomed in Courteney recalling the London taping had remained pooled in her belly, kindled like the flame of a candle.

In an epiphany, she realized why that warmth still heated her, even in the terrified wondering that someone was watching her. When she did realize, she gasped, her lips dropping open in an 'O' and trembling. The tears flooded her orbs anew.

For here she sensed a presence. A presence she hadn't felt since, in this life had only known as….

"…. Matthew?..." Nothing. "Baby? Is that you?"

Goosebumps alighted her flesh without warning, and Courteney got the premonition that someone was standing close by. She turned her head, but there was nothing in the darkness. All she could see was the floor to ceiling windows looking out onto her backyard and the rolling Hollywood foothills beyond.

The tear trickled down her cheek, but this time, a beaming smile came over Courteney's face. In recalling the dream of him she had had just before his funeral, she hadn't thought to chalk it up to anything more than just that: a dream, not even in the face of what Suzanne had later told her at the service that had strangely echoed….

She was so overwhelmed, so overpowered by a glow…. of comfort, and peace, that words failed her. Even so, Courteney attempted to find some anyway. Words that he might say:

"Jesus, it's like friggin' Ghost up in here!" Which was ironic, considering that she had lost out on the role of Molly Jensen to Demi Moore when she was 25.

In that instant, Courteney could have sworn she heard his laugh. That cackle. Only her Matty could have made such a sound.

And with that, Courteney realized: she wasn't going mad with grief. He had visited her! The sensation brought to mind the words of the Indigo Girls song: 'I come to you with strange fire… I come to you with a softer answer to the questions that lie in your path. I want to harbor you from the anger, find a refuge from the wrath. This is a message…. A message of love…. Love that moves from the inside out, love that never grows tired…. '

And Courteney also realized:

She knew what she wanted to say.

Opening up Instagram, she tabbed through her photo and video roll until she found the file she was looking for. Then she began to type; she couldn't tap out the words fast enough. When she was through, she read it over once, then, satisfied, she hit POST:

I am so grateful for every moment I had with you, Matty and I miss you every day.

When you work as closely with someone as closely as I did with Matthew, there are thousands of moments I wish I could share. For now here's one of my favorites. To give a little backstory, Chandler and Monica were supposed to have a one-night fling in London. But because of the audience's reaction, it became the beginning of their love story.

In this scene, before we started rolling, he whispered a funny line for me to say. He often did things like that. He was funny and he was kind.

Courteney ended the Instagram post with the image of a dove, its wings taking flight….