A Brooklyn mom announced her own death Tuesday in a heartbreaking social media post she had penned to ensure friends and family knew how “deeply” she was loved.
Casey McIntyre, 38, died Sunday of ovarian cancer.
She was a publisher at Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House that publishes books for kids and young adults.
“A note to my friends: if you’re reading this it means I have passed away,” her devastating Instagram post began.
“I’m so sorry, it’s horses–t and we both know it.”
The tragic message accompanied a series of photos showing McIntyre smiling while surrounded by loved ones, especially her husband, Andrew Gregory, and their 18-month-old daughter, Grace.
“I loved each and every one of you with my whole heart and I promise you, I knew how deeply I was loved,” she insisted, adding that the last five months she spent in home hospice with her family and friends were “magical.”
Gregory noted that the post was sadly cut short due to her declining health.
“Casey meant to finish this post with a list of things that were a comfort and a joy to her during her life, and I am heartbroken that I will never see that list,” he wrote.
He imagined that his wife of eight years would have included their “daughter Grace, whales, ice cream, her beloved friends, being at the beach, her niece and nephews she incorrigibly doted on, reading 10 books on a weeklong vacation, her beloved parents and sister and their amazing extended family, swimming, a perfect roast beef sandwich, and me, her sweet sweet honey.”
He asked McIntyre’s friends to comment a comfort or joy that they shared with her.
The post quickly went viral with thousands of likes and hundreds of touching comments.
“Oh Casey!!!! I don’t know how we will do it without you but we will,” Gregory said.
On Wednesday, he updated his wife’s Instagram page with screenshots of an obituary he shared from his own account describing McIntyre as a beloved family woman and an “inveterate New Yorker.”
“She derived great joy from publishing books for a new generation of readers, and saw herself in every child sprawled out on a couch, rug, or bunk bed engrossed in their latest book obsession,” her obituary read.
Born on Feb. 1, 1985, McIntyre grew up in Upper Manhattan and Tenafly, New Jersey, before attending Agnes Scott College in Georgia.
She and Gregory wed in 2015, and she was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in 2019 while undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment.
“I had a big surgery in January [2020], where they removed everything that had cancer on it — a full hysterectomy, part of my spleen, part of my liver, part of my lung. That was the scary part,” she told Cup of Jo in July 2020.
“These days, I’m feeling more hopeful. Doing IVF back-to-back with cancer treatment made me realize: women go through a lot of hard things and don’t talk about them that much.”
The couple welcomed Grace in April 2022.
Her family lovingly remembered that McIntyre “always knew what bodegas had the best magazine selections, what restaurants were best for spotting celebrities on her lunch break, and gave every new New Yorker the advice: make sure you buy a coat that covers your butt, because that’s where you lose a lot of warmth.”
Yet, “her greatest gifts and joys were her ready and generous wit, her easy laugh, her devotion to her family and friends, and her astonishing determination and grit.”
She was treated by a “top-notch” NYC medical team and was especially thankful for her “nurses, who for better or worse, told her that she could check in and then wait to start chemo while dining on a shrimp cocktail at P.J. Clarke’s.”
A memorial service is set for Dec. 2 at the Prospect Park Boathouse.
Mourners can celebrate McIntyre’s life by anonymously purchasing medical debt and then anonymously forgiving it via the charity RIP Medical Debt.
More than $44,000 has been raised as of Wednesday afternoon.
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