Fund set up for ’broken’ widow
Cancer-stricken woman left with no pension, insurance after husband’s mysterious death
Colleagues are rallying around a grief-stricken Vancouver woman with leukemia whose husband recently died after sustaining a mysterious head injury on Kitsilano Beach.
The death of Marnie Gharrett’s husband came in early June, just six months after her mother died.
Prior to that, Gharrett’s sister died in a fire nearly a decade ago, and her father suffered a fatal heart attack on Christmas Eve 1995.
“She’s very broken right now,” said Debbie Whysker, who met Gharrett in 2005 when the two began working together as E-COMM operators.
Whysker said Gharrett had been off work for a while following her mother’s death last December but that “now she’s really crushed.”
On May 30, a 58-year-old man — who has since been identified by friends as Gharrett’s partner Mark Stacey — returned home from a walk at Kitsilano Beach, seeming “dazed and confused.”
According to Vancouver police, the man had suffered a minor head injury but was unable to explain to his wife how it was sustained.
The next day, Stacey was found unresponsive and was rushed to hospital where he underwent two surgeries over the following few days to repair what was believed to be a brain bleed.
He did not survive and died on June 4.
The incident was then turned over to the VPD’s homicide team, which investigates all unexplained deaths.
Investigators have since concluded there was no foul play involved, but that the man had most likely suffered a fall and received head injuries causing a brain bleed.
The bleed, which was undetected and left overnight, then caused further complications leading to the man’s death.
“The injury was determined to be related to a fall and not a criminal event,” said Sgt. Randy Fincham, adding the investigation has since been closed. Gharrett and her husband had been together for 22 years and did not have any children.
Gharrett also lives with leukemia, although her condition is stable and the cancer is not progressing.
When reached by The Province, Gharrett had just landed in Calgary where she planned to stay with some family for some time.
“There’s no words to explain how horrible it is,” Gharrett said of the ordeal. “I still think, ‘No, that’s not real. I’m too young to be a widow. It just doesn’t seem real.’
She described her husband as having “the biggest heart of everyone she’d ever known.”
“He just opened up a world to me,” said Gharrett.
Whysker and other colleagues have now spear headed a Go Fund Me campaign in hopes of raising enough money to allow Gharrett some small peace of mind as she mourns her husband’s passing.
Gharrett’s husband was selfemployed and so had no pension nor life insurance when he died, and Gharrett is uncertain when she will return to work.
As of Wednesday, a total of $1,925 had been raised of the fund’s final goal of $10,000.
“She’s so outgoing and so bubbly,” Whysker said of her friend and colleague. “When she walks into the office, she walks up to everybody, asks how they are, gives them a hug. She’s loving and smiling — she’s hilarious. “But she’s very broken right now.”
The GoFundMe campaign can be found online at gofundme. com/8z2att3uk.