Last week, Cameron Boyce passed away at just 20-years-old. The actor, who started performing when he was just 9, died in his sleep from a seizure. Since then, many fellow actors and friends have come forward to celebrate his life and mourn his loss.
On Tuesday night, Dove Cameron joined this group by posting a six-part video to Instagram. The singer and actress starred with Cameron in the Disney movie Descendants in 2015, when Dove was 19 and Cameron was 16. Though the two seem to have been friends before that. In her heartfelt video, she reads a letter she wrote:
"Over the last six years, since he was only 14, Cameron talked me down from countless ledges, talked me through eating disorders, helped me out of a dark relationship, and through endless breakdowns. He would whisper the dance moves to me on live television when I didn't know what I was doing or hold my hand quietly to communicate wordlessly when we both knew we were thinking the same thing. I can't count on my hands the number of times we ruined something because we couldn't stop making each other laugh."
Dove says the reason she delayed speaking up about Cameron's death was because of her cognitive dissonance with posting something so emotional and private on social media. But, after returning from therapy, she decided to process her past 72 hours online after repeatedly feeling ill and broken.
After apologising to Cameron's family for their loss, she covers her face in her hands to sob, not for the first time in her long video. Then, she continues reading her letter through tears:
"He was selfless and generous. He was magnanimous and arguably a true philanthropist at only 20, beloved by anyone who had ever been lucky enough to experience his light and indescribable energy. Cameron was the ultimate example of a human being."
Dove ends her video by reading:
“Goodbye my dear, dear friend and brother. You leave behind a colossal wake, a profound chasm that can never be filled, but you also leave millions and millions of deeply impacted, hope-filled and loved-filled human beings who are who they are because of you and how you spent your brief 20 years on this earth.
"What a gift you were. You turned the world on its head. We can all only hope to be half of the human that you were, and you deserved so much more time. Goodbye to an earth angel. I will spend the rest of my life missing and loving you, and I'm all the better for knowing you.”
