Doris Day Will Have No Funeral, No Memorial, And No Tombstone

American icon Doris Day died at the age of 97 this week, but unlike many Hollywood legends, her funeral will not be grand. In fact, there won’t be a funeral at all.

As close friend Bob Bashara told People magazine, Doris made her wishes clear in her will: “No funeral, no memorial and no [grave] marker.”

“She didn’t like death,” Bob explained. “And she couldn’t be with her animals if they had to be put down. She had difficulty accepting death. I’d say we need to provide for her dogs [after she died], and she’d say, ‘I don’t want to think about it’ and she said, ‘Well, you just take care of them.’”

“She had several when her will was written, and she wanted to be sure they were taken care of,” he added of her dogs. “She didn’t like to talk about the dogs dying.”

Furthermore, Bob said, “She believed in God, and she thought her voice was God-given. She would say, ‘God gave me a voice, and I just used it.’”

Grave marker or not, Doris is definitely going to be immortalized in film. That’s the power of cinema!