Death
Brodie died nine months before publication of the book. As death neared, the cancer spread to her brain and bones, and Brodie experienced intense pain. During this period, she was visited in the hospital by her brother Thomas, who had remained a practicing Latter-day Saint. Brodie asked him to “give me a blessing,” a surprising request since she had long been estranged from both her brother and the LDS Church. Even more curious was that a few days later, Brodie released a note saying that her request for a priesthood blessing should not be misinterpreted as a request to return to the Church. It was Brodie’s last signed statement. In accordance with her wishes, friends spread her ashes over the Santa Monica Mountains, which she loved and had successfully helped to save from real estate development.
Read more about this topic: Fawn M. Brodie
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I used to think of death ... like I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy—and ... to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“‘Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado on lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alligator dies in his mail, and the swordfish never surrenders. To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epaminondas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)