When Cancer Victim Marcy Glanz Found Out She Only Had Weeks to Live, She Had a Monthlong Farewell Party Then Died in Peace
Yes, there were some sad moments but when cancer victim Marcy Glanz, 62, found out she had only weeks to live last November, she decided to turn her prognosis into a powerful celebration of life with a monthlong farewell. She then died in peace early this month.
Since early 2011 Glanz had been fighting ovarian cancer, according to the New York Times. But late last November doctors delivered what should have been some crushing news to Glanz when they told the mother of two that she only had weeks to live. Glanz, however, took the news as an opportunity to say goodbye.
"Many of us die too soon and have no chance to say goodbye, or we have a long, ugly painful demise," her husband, Marion Stewart, 69, told the Times "Hers was neither of those."
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Glanz told her family that her dying wish was a month-long farewell party laced with friendship, frivolity, laughter and tears. She wanted to help plan her memorial service and leave behind a memento for her unborn grandchildren.
"She could have just hunkered down" and died in private, explained her husband, but she chose to meet death with a celebration of her life.
"She very quickly made peace with the fact that she was going to die in a few weeks and that she would use that time to say goodbye," said Stewart, who explained that his wife had many friends going back as far as kindergarten.
She set up a medical team in her apartment in Manhattan, N.Y., and despite her failing health she talked laughed and cried with everyone.
Glanz took the time to reminisce with her husband about how they met on Manhattan's Upper West Side in July of 1977, shortly after the city was hit with a blackout.
"I always joked that if she had met me before the lights went out and got a good look at me, it wouldn't have gone anywhere," he said. The couple got married in the late 1980s and their union produced two sons, Jeremy and Josh.
Glanz, who graduated from Harvard with a master's degree in educational psychology, worked as a research associate for children's television shows such as "Sesame Street." She later moved to advertising and eventually became a stay-at-home mom to raise her sons.
Stewart, an economist, retired several years ago to spend the rest of his life with his wife.
"We did many of the things that people do after death, but we did it before she died," he said of his wife's celebration.
"There was no 'Woe is me' or 'I can't stand this,'" he said of her memorial service. "There was just a peacefulness and wanting to wrap everything up" like the celebration of life that it was.
She left behind a recording of herself reading the children's book Goodnight Moon for her grandchildren, and her friends came from all across the country to celebrate.
"She couldn't even eat, yet she told me she was really, really happy to be able to help her family deal with the loss before she was gone," said her longtime friend Catherine Paura.
On Dec. 24, Glanz celebrated her 62nd birthday with three different kinds of parties and she later made the traditional family trip to the Lincoln Center to see "The Nutcracker."
On New Year's Eve, she had "one last blowout party," and celebrated with 20 people. Then, on Jan. 5, Marcy Glanz died in her bed surrounded by family.
