Marnie was drop-dead gorgeous, expansively generous, and deeply, passionately loved by those who knew her. At the very same time, she was excruciatingly insecure, histrionic, combative, and sometimes reviled, even by those who loved her most. She put on the dazzling smile of a movie star every day of her adult life even when terrible things were happening, yet when she stepped off the stage, she was the most real person any of us had ever known.

When Marnie was dying of breast cancer, it was simply impossible for most of us to believe. I, for one, expected her to go out in a fiery motorcycle crash, a high-speed skiing incident, or to be killed by some jealous lover. She’d always declared with deepest conviction that she’d “never, ever get old,” so her death at 49, when she was still as beautiful and full of ferocious energy as she’d ever been, wasn’t the surprise. But for Marnie to be waylaid by the black creep of cancer was somehow simply incomprehensible.

Equally incomprehensible was how elegantly she handled it. Despite being prone to heavy-duty drama and love of shock value, she never complained throughout her two-year bout with surgeries, tests, radiation, complications, and pain. She maintained her movie star smile and tinkly laugh to the very end, and made all of us – her family, customers, and countless friends -- feel like the whole ordeal was little more than a paper cut. And in many ways, to many of us, she became a Hero.