Clayton Johnson had spent the night trying to figure out what to say.

One day after Hayden Panettiere’s death, the Nashville musician posted a video of the two of them making music together. Johnson played guitar while Panettiere sang beside him, a small record of a friendship he was now trying to describe after losing her.

Words were hard to find.

Then Johnson remembered the last text she had ever sent him.

Panettiere, the Heroes and Nashville actress, died Aug. 16 at age 36. On Aug. 17, Johnson shared their final exchange as part of his tribute, as first reported by PEOPLE.

Their Last Conversation Had Been Weeks Earlier

Johnson began his post by addressing Panettiere directly.

“Sweet Hayden,” he wrote, explaining that he had spent the night trying to process her death.

He also mentioned Jansen Panettiere, the actress’s younger brother, who died in 2023. Johnson wrote that he hoped Hayden was now at peace and reunited with him.

The two friends had spoken by phone only a few weeks before her death.

But that wasn’t their final contact.

Johnson still had one more message from Panettiere on his phone.

Rather than being about her career, her health or the difficult years she had discussed publicly, it centered on something much larger than herself.

Johnson saved that detail for the heart of his tribute.

Her Final Text Asked for One Thing

The last message Panettiere sent Johnson began with an acknowledgment that the idea she was about to express might sound unrealistic.

“Honestly, people think it’s a joke to ask for world peace,” she wrote.

Then she finished the thought.

“But that would be me.”

For Johnson, the text seemed to capture something essential about the friend he knew.

“That was you in a nutshell,” he wrote.

The line took on a different weight after her death. It had not been written as a farewell, at least not according to anything Johnson shared. It was simply the last text that remained between them.

There was no grand statement about herself.

Her wish was “world peace.”

Johnson paired those words with footage of the pair singing and playing together, allowing followers to see Panettiere in a setting far removed from the television roles that first made her famous.

He ended by saying he was grateful he had known her.

“And I’ll always be grateful for the memories,” Johnson wrote. “Fly high, Hayden.”

Her Family Announced Her Death the Day Before

Panettiere’s representative confirmed her death on Sunday, Aug. 16, in a statement issued on behalf of her father, Alan Panettiere.

The family described her as an “incredible light” and a “force of nature” who had brought love and joy to people in her personal life and to those who knew her from the screen.

Police officers and emergency medical personnel had responded to a Greenville, South Carolina, residence after receiving a report of an unresponsive woman.

Dispatch audio obtained by PEOPLE included references to an overdose and cardiac arrest around the time of her death.

The Greenville Police Department and Greenville County Coroner’s Office were investigating. A police spokesperson said a preliminary investigation had found no indication of foul play or suspicious circumstances.

Panettiere left behind her 11-year-old daughter, Kaya, whom she shared with former fiancé Wladimir Klitschko.

Her death also came three years after the loss of Jansen, the brother Johnson mentioned in his tribute.

She Had Recently Spoken About What She Wanted to Leave Behind

Only a few months before her death, Panettiere had published her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning.

During a May 26 event in Los Angeles hosted by Book Soup at the Harmony Gold Theater, she talked about why sharing the hardest parts of her life had mattered to her.

People both inside and outside the entertainment industry, she said, had approached her after hearing her discuss mental health.

Some told her that hearing Panettiere speak openly had helped them become more honest about their own struggles and seek help.

“Because you’ve talked about your mental health,” Panettiere recalled people telling her, “it gave me the courage to be honest about mine.”

For her, those conversations changed the value of telling difficult stories in public.

“This is worth it,” she said.

Panettiere then described what she hoped could come from being that open.

“I can hopefully leave the world a better place than I found it,” she said.

The thought fit closely with the text Johnson would later find himself rereading after her death.

Months apart, in two very different conversations, Panettiere had returned to the same idea: what might be better for someone beyond herself.

Johnson Was Left With the Message on His Phone

The Aug. 17 tribute did not try to explain Panettiere’s entire life.

Johnson shared a video.

He remembered a phone call from a few weeks earlier.

And then he revealed the words still sitting in their text exchange.

By that point, Panettiere’s family had announced her death, investigators were still working to establish what had happened, and tributes from people who knew her had begun appearing publicly.

Johnson’s contribution was quieter.

He had known the actress away from a script, and the final thing she had written to him wasn’t about being remembered.

It was a wish.

“Honestly, people think it’s a joke to ask for world peace, but that would be me.”

Johnson followed it with six words of his own.

“That was you in a nutshell.”