*Quick Summary: The author adds a personal eulogy as a memorial to friend Brittney Cason.*
I need to write this post, but I don’t want to.
Let me start at the beginning – 2011 – The filming of the Brad Paisley video Old Alabama. Brittney Cason was a Production Assistant and actress in the video. I was in charge of the Hendrick Heritage Center, and many millions of dollars in cars and other personal possessions for Rick Hendrick. Rick and Brad are buddies, Rick gave Brad the building for the week to shoot his video, so here we go.
Rick tells Brad to do what he needs to do. Brad passes that on to his people, who pass that along to Brittney. Brad and his folks are very conservative and respectful of the building and its contents, but also want to utilize everything they can while they are there. Totally understandable. Meanwhile, my bosses under Mr. Hendrick all give me a totally different set of marching orders. Pretty predictable ones – don’t let anybody touch anything, don’t let anybody take pictures of anything, make sure no one damages anything, and if you’re in doubt, say “NO!”. Okay, I get it. No. To everything. Gotcha! My immediate supervisor and I, armed only with a two-letter word, against two dozen other people in a 58,000 sq.ft. building with millions of dollars of highly breakable stuff in it. All of whom have already been told to do whatever they need to do. What could go wrong?
To say Brittney and I were destined to bump heads was an understatement. Here she has been tasked with making things happen no matter what, thinking she has full support, and I’ve been tasked with protecting everything at all cost, thinking I have full support. We collided a few times, but despite her determined, confident, over-the-top friendly personality, and my very reserved work persona, we compromised quite nicely.
Her personality was so friendly, I was convinced it was fake. Nobody acts that bubbly all the time. My philosophy on that was simple – this is stressful and we’ve got a lot of work to do together, so let’s be real. You be you, I’ll be me, and we’ll work our way through this. Don’t be fake. She just wouldn’t give up this happy act. We’d have a disagreement, she’d be upset, I’d turn around, and she’d be offering me a water, or asking me how my day was going. It was annoying, because in my mind it was clearly anything but legit. Nobody is that happy. Nobody tries to take care of people who are that hard to work with (me at the time). It was just so aggravating. Every time she’d smile, I’d scowl. I didn’t want her to think I was going to fall for her little happy routine. Let’s just get through this Cason! Dang!
It came time for some driving sequences. A determination was made Brittney was not going to be allowed to drive anything. She begged us, but the answer was “NO!”. She asked for, “the cheapest car he has”, and the answer did not change – “NO!”. The fact remained the other two ladies who were going to be driving had been professional drivers at some point in their careers, were capable, and had the credentials to drive cars of this caliber. Brittney simply did not. She was disappointed, but they loaded her car onto a low open trailer, and towed her around the complex to do her shots. Her disappointment faded quickly and her personality shined right through. When she got back, she was somehow still overjoyed. Surely it all had to be solely for appearances I thought. Nobody could shake off disappointment that quickly and effortlessly.
Fast forward a few days, the filming ended and the production team moved on. We were able to put things back where they belonged, and get back to our “real job”. No matter how hard we tried, everything was a mess. Everything had been touched. There was fingerprints and dust everywhere. Two solid weeks of cleanup ensued. They really took great care of everything, but we’d moved it all, had doors open to the dusty outside for hours, and just had a mess left over from all the rearranging.
At least every other day, I’d get a call from Brittney needing something. She left a few things behind, so she got those the first day. Then a day or so later, we found some things from one of the actresses, so she came to get those, one of the production people still had a key card, so she returned that. Just a constant stream of Brittney. Each time she came back, she hugged me, although I wasn’t sure why, and seemed overly excited to be there. I determined it had to be that she wanted to maintain access to the Heritage Center and all the cool stuff inside, so I told her the next time she came back would be the last. Get everything together, call whoever you need to call, and get organized, because the next time was it. No more free trips. I had a job to do and part of that job was to maintain the privacy of the building. It wasn’t open to the public, and the shoot was over. Time to move on.
A few weeks go by and there is an event in the Heritage Center. Brittney came as a +1 of one of the invited guests. I saw her from a distance as she walked in. This convinced me she wanted to maintain access to my building, but at the same time, I realized she apparently didn’t need me to get that access. This was a fancy event. Everyone was dressed very nicely. As usual, I was in a button up shirt and black jeans – my uniform. I was clearly “the help” and tried to fade into the background as I usually did at these things, only emerging when I was needed. Almost immediately, Brittney started scanning the room. I figured she was looking for a friend, but when she made eye contact with me, I figured out who she was looking for – me. She left the person she came with, and bounced, yes, bounced over to me. She was so happy to see me and gave me a big hug. For whatever reason, that was it. She won. I couldn’t play the game any more, because I was the only one playing. It was finally clear she genuinely cared how I was. She actually liked me. She didn’t need me any more, yet here she was in a corner at this high-profile event, talking to the help. It was at that moment I got the true essence of the woman. Nothing about her was fake or engineered – she just carried around a pocket full of happiness she gave away to others. Having seen so many fake people in that job, I’d failed to recognize it when a real one was so close. Immediate regret ensued on my part. I’d really got this one wrong. Rare for me, but I blew it.
She would call or come by occasionally after that. We’d text back and forth just to check on one another, or if either of us broke big news on social media, it would bring about a direct message from the other. Always genuine. Never once the type of interaction that made you keep a running tally in your head to see who owed the other anything. Just two friends who cared about each other. When I left Hendrick, she was the first to wish me well, further proving it never was about that job in her mind. When I’d start a new social account, she would be one of the first to follow. Nothing but support from Brittney. Nothing but good vibes.
When she had a miscarriage, I messaged her for days. When I had back surgery, she returned the favor. Reading posts from others on social media lately, it seems I was not alone. Somehow, some way, this incredibly genuine woman kept up with a lot of people the same way. A LOT of people! Story after story have emerged of how she would reach out to those not doing well in an effort to cheer them up, or somehow lighten their burden. She used calls, texts, comments, posts, and direct messages to help people and even change lives, often without anyone publicly knowing. That makes the next part that much more painful.
The last session of messages I shared with Britt came about a month before her death. I knew she had recently dissolved her marriage, left her job in Vegas, and was staying with her parents in VA for a while. I wanted to check on her. We fired a few messages back and forth, and of course, she was more concerned with how I was, but I still felt I needed to convey that I was here if she needed someone to talk with. She seemed fine. She truly seemed okay.
I don’t know the circumstances surrounding Brittney Cason’s death. I may never know. Here’s what I do know for certain – A lot of us feel like we failed her. Me especially. I’m no mind reader, but I know you’re supposed to check on your friends, and I feel like I could have done more for her. I know I want to do more right now. If there’s a takeaway from all this, let it be that sometimes people seem too good to be true, but they are indeed that good. When you find someone like that, hold tight. The same personality traits that cause someone to be that good, also let in a lot of pain.
Take care of each other. Take care of yourselves.
This is her penultimate tweet. Her final #DeepFriedThoughts. She lived this way. This was Brittney Cason:
I shot this video of Old Alabama performed live during the Brad Paisley concert on September 14, 2012 just to share with some of the people in the videos behind the band. It took me a few years to get around to uploading it, but Brittney was one of the first people I shared it with. If you’ll pardon the bad audio, you can see some different footage of her than you would see in the music video:
Below are some screen captures from the Old Alabama video. They make me smile because this is the way I want to remember her – happy, free, and overcoming any setback in her way.
