Tig Notaro on friendship, loss, and Andrea Gibson's legacy

After poet Andrea Gibson's death in 2025, comedian Tig Notaro sat down with Anderson Cooper to share something most of us avoid: what it's really like to be present when someone you love is dying. What she described wasn't just heartbreaking but surprisingly beautiful.

Gibson, who openly documented their terminal illness in the documentary "Come See Me in the Good Light," showed Notaro a different way to face mortality. Instead of running from it, Gibson spoke about death with the same honesty and poetry they brought to everything else in their life.

"I don't even know how to explain what I was just a part of and what I just witnessed," Notaro told Cooper. "The humanity was on overdrive."

The experience changed Notaro's perspective completely. She told Upworthy that unlike when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 and just kept pushing through, Gibson's death made her stop and really think. "Andrea's death made me sit down," she explained.

Now Notaro wants to talk about death more openly, not as something terrifying lurking in the shadows but as a natural part of life worth discussing. She even joked about becoming a death doula with Anderson Cooper, imagining startled patients seeing them walk in for their final moments.

But beneath the humor lies genuine wisdom. When asked what she'd say to dying patients, Notaro kept it simple: listen more than you talk, offer comfort, and remind them they're loved. For families struggling to find perfect words, she offers relief: "You don't have to say the perfect thing. You showed up and that counts more than anything you could possibly say."

Why This Inspires

Gibson's final words to Notaro capture everything beautiful about their friendship in one simple sentence: "Tig, I loved being your friend." No elaborate speeches or dramatic declarations, just honest gratitude for years of connection.

Notaro says Gibson made everyone around them more honest just by existing. "They were really, deeply funny and deeply gentle in a way that wasn't fragile," she shared. That combination of humor and vulnerability is exactly what Notaro is now bringing to conversations about death.

She's not claiming to have mystical experiences or perfect answers. When asked about feeling deceased loved ones nearby, Notaro said simply: "If something brings comfort and doesn't hurt anyone, I'm not interested in debunking it. I'm tired. Let people feel things."

That exhaustion with overthinking everything, that willingness to just let comfort exist where we find it, feels revolutionary in its simplicity.

Notaro isn't abandoning comedy or transforming into someone unrecognizable. She's just done pretending death isn't part of life, done holding onto things that aren't real, and ready for what she calls "a new normal" where the hardest conversations aren't avoided but embraced.

Gibson's legacy lives on in Notaro's newfound honesty and in everyone they touched with their words and fearless authenticity.