Recalling how in January she was diagnosed with terminalmetastatic lung cancer, she admits to having been initially terried.
“I’d think, ‘God, I have cancer.
I won’t be around to see my daughter get married.'”
Also, check out ourslideshowof fun photos from Harper’s career.
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“Tony said he didn’t want to discuss it,” says Harper.
“He has a whole phobia about the coffin and death,” Harper explains.
“He doesn’t go to funerals.”
“Valerie is a realist,” says Cacciotti.
“And she worries more about others than herself.
She worries about what’s going to happen to us when she’s gone.”
But when Harper told her husband that she wanted to be cremated, he dug in once again.
“The body is just a rooming house,” Harper says.
“I don’t care.
I said, ‘Go cheap.
Go to the Neptune Society [a low-cost national provider of cremation services].’
A friend went that way, and it was fabulous.
You go out in Santa Monica Bay, cast flowers, then the ashes.
Something even came in the mail offering a $120 discount.
I said, ‘Tony, we can get it if we order by Thursday.’
I was trying to make him laugh, but he didn’t think it was funny.”
Finally Cacciotti came clean with Harper about his reluctance.
“I wanted to be buried next to her,” he recalls quietly.
“That meant I had to muster my fear and deal with the cemetery thing.”
Although Cacciotti refused to enter the main funeral home, he toured the property by golf cart.
Says Harper, “We have a fabulous view of the Hollywood sign!”
As it turns out, Harper had visited the cemetery decades ago.
“They’re tame and come right up to you.”
From her living room couch, Harper imitates the peacock cry in high volume: “Ahhhhhhhhryaa!
And then they open up their enormous tails.
It’s a life-giving place.”
