One Woman’s Dying Wish: A Monthlong Farewell Party

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times In the weeks before she died, Marcy Glanz spent time celebrating her life and preparing for her death. Her funeral service was held last Thursday on the Upper West Side.

Marcy Glanz had been battling ovarian cancer since early 2011, but in late November she was given grim news by her doctors â€" her cancer was so severe that she had only several weeks to live.

“Many of us die too soon and have no chance to say goodbye, or we have a long, ugly painful demise,” said her husband, Marion Stewart. “Hers was neither of those.”

To ease the pain of death on herself and her loved ones, Ms. Glanz had a dying wish: She essentially wanted a monthlong farewell party that mixed frivolity and friendship, laughter and tears.

She wanted to say goodbye her way to her husband and their two sons, as well as to nearly everyone else she knew. She wanted to help plan her own memorial service, and leave something heartfelt behind for her unborn grandchildren. She wanted a poignant recapitulation of her 62 years on earth.

“She could have just hunkered down” and essentially waited to die in a private fashion, Mr. Stewart said. Instead, she chose to meet her impending death head-on, in the company of many.

“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,” he said, adding that this was no simple task for a woman who cultivated scores of friendships going back to kindergarten, growing up in Newton, Mass.

For this party, no hospital or hospice care would do. She had a medical staff set her up in her West 90th Street apartment so that she was mobile, despite “dangling with drains” and other tubes, Mr. Stewart said.

Her intestines ravaged by cancer, Ms. Glanz was unable to process nutrients and was slowly “starving to death,” Mr. Stewart said. But while her body was wasting away, her mind was still sharp and she could - and did â€" talk and laugh and cry with everyone.

First she and Mr. Stewart reminisced about their years together, after meeting at a party on the Upper West Side in July of 1977, moments after the blackout hit.

“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. That night, they talked by moonlight and candlelight and soon fell in love. They married, and by the late 1980s, had two young sons, Jeremy and Josh.

Ms. Glanz had a master’s degree in educational psychology from Harvard and had worked as a research associate for children’s television shows such as “Sesame Street.” After switching to advertising, she eventually ended her career to raise her sons.

Mr. Stewart, 69, an economist, retired several years ago, so he and his wife could enjoy their remaining years together - his assumption being that he would die first.

But it was working out differently. The family spent early December sharing memories. They dug out dozens of photo albums, home movies on videotape and even an old slide projector.

Yes, there was plenty of sobbing, “but there was a lot more laughing than crying,” Mr. Stewart said, adding, “We did many of the things that people do after death, but we did it before she died.”

Ms. Glanz left her husband a written outline for her memorial service, down to the music and the speakers. An amateur painter, she narrated a slide show of her works, for her sons to put online for others.

“There was no ‘Woe is me’ or ‘I can’t stand this,’” he said. “There was just a peacefulness and wanting to wrap everything up.”

Her most searing regret was that she would never experience becoming a grandmother. So her sons presented her with copies of the children’s book “Goodnight Moon.” She used to read it to them in bed, and now she recorded a version so that one day, when the boys had children, those children could be tucked in by the grandmother they never met.

Then came Ms. Glanz’s friends, some from across town, others from across the country. Many later confided to Mr. Stewart that her most pressing wish was that they promise to look after him.

As her longtime friend Catherine Paura put it, “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.”

By late December she was in a wheelchair but still having relatives give her manicures and pedicures and directing the family through the making of her traditional lemon meringue pie. For her 62nd birthday, on Dec. 24, she celebrated with three different parties.

With great assistance, she made the traditional family trip to “The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Center, but that would be the last time she left her apartment.

On New Year’s Eve, she decided spontaneously to throw “one last blowout party,” and invited 20 people over, Mr. Stewart said.

She held forth in her wheelchair, toasting everyone with ginger ale. She dressed outrageously. Her pink, fuzzy boa helped hide her emaciated frame.

New Year’s Day was the last day she could speak. On Jan 5, she died in her bed, her family surrounding her.

At the memorial service at Congregation Rodeph Sholom temple on West 88th Street, Ms. Glanz was eulogized by relatives and a group of childhood friends, including Dick Friedman, 62, an editor and author.

“She was the glue in our lives that made sure everyone kept in touch,” he said, adding that she died “exactly the way she lived her life.”

Ms. Paura said that in the end, “She had the ability and wherewithal to say everything she wanted to say.”

“It was as if, by facing her death through the prism of love,’’ Ms. Paura added, “she transcended it.”