Support Melanie Kelly in Her Final Days

To Our Loving Community:

Our sweet Melanie left us on June 6 at 2:45 pm, surrounded by friends and family while under the compassionate care of Haven Hospice.

We’re sorry we didn’t post an update more quickly, but as you might imagine, we have been sad, overwhelmed, and exhausted. We struggled — are still struggling — to find the bandwidth to write.

When Melanie chose to enter home hospice, the doctors’ expectations were that we’d have several more months with her. But Melanie had her own sense of the time. After seven years of doctors, hospitals, constant pain, and treatments that were often as painful as the illness, she was tired and ready to let go.

On the Wednesday before she passed, she suffered a small stroke and woke with some aphasia, which eased over the course of the morning. By afternoon, Melanie asked to be moved to Hospice’s ET York Center for a respite visit. What was intended to be a short-term stay, meant to give her caretakers a break, became, instead, her last days.

We established this GoFundMe to support Melanie and Cyrus during her final months, which turned out to be only weeks. Your love and support buoyed us on this journey, so it’s important to us that we honor the kindness and generosity you’ve shown. At present, your contributions will cover her cremation and other related expenses, handling her outstanding bills, transferring her car title/insurance/utilities/cable into Cyrus’ name, and paying his rent/expenses forward a few months so he has space to heal, especially after the intensity of the last six months.

If you have concerns or feel uncomfortable with any of this, please message us privately, and we’ll return your donation.

We did our best to reach out to those who love Melanie so they could see her before she transitioned. But the unexpected speed of her decline meant we weren’t as skillful and thorough as we would have liked. There are many of you she loved deeply that we missed. Please accept our apologies. Since her illness began, Melanie preferred to focus on living and spending time with those she loved. She wanted to create memories, rather than create contact lists or plan her death, and we honored that.

Melanie didn’t want a funeral, and we are respecting her wishes. But she loved her friends, family, and community, so we’ll celebrate her by coming together for her birthday, on Sunday July 23rd, from 4 to 7 pm at Loosey’s Downtown (120 SW 1st Avenue, Gainesville, FL 32601). We hope you can come. If you have pictures you wish to share for her celebration, you can upload them here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/XrQJuEcNVr6VTEGN7

Thank you, dear friends and loved ones, for your kindness, your generosity, and your desire to provide comfort to Melanie and Cyrus as she reached the end of her life. Your support has been a blessing to them and meant more to us than we can possibly say.

In deep gratitude,

Friends and family of Melanie Kelly

In April 2016, Melanie had emergency spinal surgery. The lower back pain she had been experiencing turned out to be an aggressive, genetic form of breast cancer that had metastasized to her spinal column. This April, her oncologist said that cancer had moved into her liver and lungs, and Melanie decided to enter home hospice care.

This decision impacts her beloved Cyrus’ and her life profoundly. Until recently, Melanie relied on a cane but could go out as long as someone else drove, and she was able to care for herself. Untreated, the cancer is advancing quickly, so she’s now on oxygen and needs assistance for basic life activities.

A hospice nurse drops by once a week, but it falls to Cyrus to provide around-the-clock care. He had to leave his job. They could no longer stay in their second-floor apartment, with its steep staircase, so they moved, in the meantime, into her mom’s street-level house.

We’re asking for your support during these final months of her life. Without Cyrus working, they are subsisting on Melanie’s modest SSI check and food stamps. This remaining time is precious. We’d like it to be free of worries about bills, or losing their Duckpond apartment, or cremation costs.

One of the most enduring and magical aspects of Gainesville is its sense of community and its capacity to pull together when one of the tribe needs help. Melanie and Cyrus are loved by so many in this community, and we hope we can count on you, their extended family, to show up once again for them.

Any help you can provide is appreciated from the depths of our hearts. Just knowing that you’re there for her will touch them both deeply.

For those of you who have been with us since the beginning, we thank you for the years of love, encouragement, and support you’ve offered. It’s made the journey one of solidarity rather than solitude.

With love,

Friends and Family of Melanie Kelly