The final two weeks of Marina Day’s life were an adventure.
“Are we ready?” she asked her mother, Sharon Day, on March 12. “Are we ready?”
The spirited 24-year-old had been dealing with an aggressive leukemia since 2010 and had said 10 days earlier she realized wasn’t getting better. On March 12, during brief moments of awareness when she asked the question, Sharon Day wasn’t sure exactly what her daughter meant. But she had an idea.
“We’re ready,” her mother replied, tearfully. “We’re not going to like it and we’re going to cry. But we’re ready.”
Later that day, surrounded by her parents and eight close friends, Marina Alison Day, of Pine Lake and Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., died at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She pre-planned a three-day memorial celebration, which will be held this weekend near her parents’ home in Pine Lake.
Her body was cremated by Casper Funeral Services in Boston, as she requested, and Day asked that her ashes to be scattered in several places and shared by family and friends.
Asked by a friend during her final days what it felt like, Marina replied, “It is like an adventure,” her mother recalled.
Born in Atlanta and raised in Pine Lake, Day danced before she walked. With musical influences on both sides of her family, she also sang and learned to play several instruments, including the violin and guitar. She performed original songs at Eddie’s Attic as a teen and during the Roswell Riverside concert series, her mother said.
From 1997 until 2007, Day was enrolled in classes at the Decatur School of Ballet, said the school’s owner and artistic director, Kathleen Banks Everett.
“As a performer she was lovely and strong. She moved fully and completely from her soul,” Everett said. “She was a mature and complete dancer, even from a young age.”
Day was home-schooled and during her senior year took classes at Georgia Perimeter College. She subsequently enrolled at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, where she studied music and theater, with plans to pursue a career in the arts. She would have graduated in May 2012, but at the beginning of her junior year, her leukemia was diagnosed. She was heartbroken at the prospect of leaving school, her mother said.
“I really wanted to see where she where she was going with her work,” said Melanie Hammet, a Pine Lake neighbor and a fellow singer and songwriter. “Her commitment to her artistry was significant to me. When we talked music, I didn’t feel like I was talking to a kid who ‘wished they could,’ but somebody ‘who already did.’ She wasn’t a hobbyist. She didn’t do music on the side. It was life for her.”
During her last days, a friend brought a guitar to Day’s hospital room. The friend sang and played a little, then held the guitar so Day could strum a tune. As much as Day enjoyed music, she loved the journey that was her life, her mother said.
“She lived those last two weeks like she did the rest of her life, with grace, fierce intention and beauty,” Day said.
In addition to her mother, Day is survived by her father, Michael A. Day of Pine Lake; and her grandmothers, Marjorie Gates Day of Atlanta and Teresa Francis of Snellville.
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