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.

Directions to Marcy’s grave:

Marcy is buried at River View near Lewis & Clark College in Section 134 along the southern edge of the wooded ravine that runs through the Cemetery (easiest access through the back entrance on SW Palatine Hill Road; consult the map on their website). Go downhill from the outdoor mausoleum; the road curves right towards another wooded ravine and then curves left. Park before the road curves right again, past the second sidewalk, looking for a half-bench on the uphill curb marked Belloit. Looking uphill and towards the right, Marcy’s grave is just beyond a prominent marker and bench for the Pollock family. Her bench will be installed in the fall of 2015.

Additional Links:
Marcy’s Tribute Page
Marcy Westerling Legacy Fund
Video from the Aug. 23 Memorial Celebration