Marcy Westerling Living Legacy Memorial Celebration – August 23, 2015
Sunday, August 23rd Rural Organizing Project and Marcy’s friends and family held a memorial celebration to honor her memory, her life and her legacy. The slide shows, eulogies and videos on this page allow you to share in our celebration of Marcy and the ways she touched our lives.
Video: Marcy’s Life in Pictures
Local and national leaders and dear friends and family shared their reflections of Marcy’s incredible impact as an organizer, a cancer warrior, and a beloved friend, mentor and family member. We celebrated the love, beauty, humor and passion Marcy brought to our lives. Marcy’s dear friend Holly Pruett led us through a powerful, moving service where we sang, laughed, cried and committed ourselves to carrying on her legacy. To read some of these eulogies, see the sidebar on the right side of this page.
In tribute to Marcy’s spirit of defiance, her insistence that we join her in looking her illness and her death squarely in the eye, Holly Pruett created a slideshow depicting Marcy the Cancer Warrior; Marcy in her final days; Marcy as we cared for her body after death, and Marcy as we lowered her into her earthen grave. Note: This slideshow contains images of Marcy at the end of her life and after her death.
Video: Mourning Marcy
Death is not my friend but it is no longer my enemy. It is our collective reality and I may get to model walking into it first. I hope that the way I walk there, protected and emboldened by a cape made up of your love, will better prepare you for your own journeys.
– Marcy Westerling
Marcy inspired people around the world by sharing her personal experience with cancer. Here she speaks of her journey and her Livingly Dying blog.
Livingly Dying
Video: Video of the Aug. 23, 2015 Memorial
In Marcy’s own words:
Visit often. Make my grave site a place where you problem-solve dilemmas, process new adventures, keen and celebrate the many transitions in your own life. Come alone. Bring others. Young people, scared people, irreverent people. Keep me as present as you can. I truly believe that I will feel and treasure this.
Additional Links:
Marcy’s Tribute Page
Marcy Westerling Legacy Fund
Video from the Aug. 23 Memorial Celebration