Valerie Harper is taking her story about terminal brain cancer to national TV to make “all of us to be less afraid of death.”
“Don’t go to the funeral before the day of the funeral,” Harper told “The Doctors” yesterday. “While you’re living, live.”
It was one of the 73-year-old “Rhoda” star’s first stops on an unprecedented TV farewell tour that started last week when she revealed that she could have as little as three months to live.
She also appeared on “Today” yesterday (more of her interview airs on this morning’s show) — and, tomorrow, will appear on the CBS daytime show, “The Talk.”
“I thought that instead of after I’m dead . . . it would be good and a chance for people that have grown up with me — and current fans, and people on Twitter and Facebook, and all the loving people — that it’s better for them to get a heads-up,” she said on “The Doctors.”
“While I’m still able to speak and show you I’m cooking my husband’s dinner, and walking on the bluffs in Santa Monica, and more than anything living in the moment . . . I really want Americans and all of us to be less afraid of death,”
She even joked that her personality got in the way of a quiet exit. “I’ve always had a big mouth, and I’ve never been able to keep a secret!” she said.
“That’s not to say that celebrities or anyone shouldn’t stay private,” she told Savannah Guthrie on “Today.”
“Do what you feel,” she said about others in her circumstances. “But I’m saying it feels damn good to be open about it, face it and see what you can do.
“If you die, you’re not a failure. You’re just somebody who had cancer.
“What I’m saying is keep your consciousness, your thoughts open to infinite possibility — and keep yourself open to miracles.”
Harper first found TV fame on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as Rhoda Morgenstern before starring in a successful spinoff, “Rhoda.”