I threw a ‘living funeral’ for my dying sister — it was magical, not morbid

Heidi Satterthwaite wanted to go out with a bang.

Before her death last year, the 34-year-old made an unusual request — she wanted a party. Rather, she wanted a celebration of her life with an expansive guest list of all her family and friends.

“I would describe it as an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. The sentence of her life,” Jenna Satterthwaite, Heidi’s older sister, told BBC Radio 4’s Women Hour.

“I guess you could call it closure.”

In 2018, Heidi was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndromesor MDS, a rare type of cancer that occurs when blood-forming cells found in bone marrow are abnormal.

When planning the end-of-life extravaganza — which Jenna likened to a wedding with speeches, dancing and catering — the family braced for the worst, only expecting a handful of loved ones to show up.

Instead, they were pleasantly shocked when hundreds showed up.

“To our utter surprise and delight, 200 people showed up at the last minute, in the middle of the summer,” she said.

“People canceled vacations, hopped on planes, rented cars, they made it happen and they showed up for her to say their goodbyes.”

The “magical and pain-filled celebration of her life,” Jenna said, also included a dance with Heidi and her husband, who swayed the same song played at their wedding.

On Xthe platform formerly known as Twitter, Jenna penned a bittersweet poem titled “Advice for the Dying.” In it, she advised to host a party, not a funeral, for those who have “the curse of advance notice,” because funerals aren’t as “fun.”

“It was that moment when you pause to acknowledge a beautiful life — and we don’t do that often, we’re bad at celebrating, we’re always looking to the next thing and shifting goal posts,” Jenna told BBC Radio 4.

“So it was really special to come together and kind of close that sentence as a group and say, ‘This was her life, she lived it well.’ Exclamation point.”