Teddi Mellencamp and dad John get real about burial plans as she battles Stage 4 cancer
Teddi Mellencamp has been making plans. Her father John Mellencamp is helping her out — whether she likes it or not.
"Yesterday my dad calls 11 times in a row," Teddi said in the Tuesday episode of the "Two T's in a Pod" podcast. "Finally I answer — 'I'm in the bath! Let me live a little!'"
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The "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" alumna, who was diagnosed with melanoma in 2022, has been fighting a tougher cancer battle since doctors found plum-size tumors as well as smaller tumors in her brain and more tumors in her lungs in February. She had brain surgery, then two days later, they found an additional four small brain tumors. Her melanoma had progressed to Stage 4 and invaded her brain and lungs. The tumors had probably been there for six months to a year, she said.
"He goes, 'I just want to make sure you're going to be in our group family mausoleum,'" she said on the podcast.
"Wait wait wait wait wait," co-host Tamra Judge exclaimed. "He did not. John! No!"
But yeah, he did — John Mellencamp was actually weighing in on his daughter's funeral. So Teddi said she asked him, "Where would my kids go?" Not where would they visit her grave; she wanted to know where they would go in the mausoleum.
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"He's like, 'Well, there's gonna be the top five. and then we're gonna have little areas around it and then that's where everyone's gonna get buried,'" she said. "And I go, 'Do I need to make this commitment right now?'"
His reply: "'Well, you're doing your will right now, so you might as well put it in there,'" she said.
Teddi Mellencamp said that's when she started making demands, like what would go on her tombstone — if tombstones even exist in mausoleums.
"I said, 'Somebody sent a quote to me the other day that seriously made me laugh so hard, I cried with laughter.' It's a person I barely know ... he goes, you wanna know the good news? He goes, 'Hot girls never die.'
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"I was like, 'That's going on my tombstone.'"
She also talked to her rocker dad about her end-of-life wishes, which he wants to be in charge of. She said she was "willing to fight, fight, fight" but doesn't want to be "a vegetable." Her dad found some wiggle room in that decision, implying that "vegetable" status might leave room for discussion. She did not agree. "I'm like, 'What do you mean, like If I'm a cucumber?'"
"Either way," Teddi said, "I think I agreed to be in the mausoleum and I'm going to have to work on my sister next week. The kids'll be right behind me."
The family mausoleum is in Indiana, the source of the inspiration behind those "Pink Houses" that John Mellencamp made famous in the 1980s.
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And working on her will is in line with what Teddi Mellencamp, who is getting radiation and immunotherapy, told Us Weekly earlier this month.
"A little PSA," she told the outlet. "Get life insurance early … and do your will. Doing all of those things once you've already been diagnosed with cancer isn't a dream. That's really hard. Hopefully you never get sick, but do it before you get sick."
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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