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How Am I Gonna
Find A Man If I'm
Dead?

An autobiography by former
Detroiter Fanny (Jill) Gaynes.

/--

RUTH UTTMANN STAFF WRITER

anny Gaynes would have
turned 48 on March 30. Her
birthday present is one she's
giving, not receiving.
Known as "Jill" by her De-
troit friends, Ms. Gaynes wrote
a book before she died of breast
cancer last October. How Am I

After college, Ms. Gaynes
taught school, then showcased
her wit and literary flair as a
writer for publishing and ad-
vertising companies. She moved
out to Los Angeles in the 1970s.
It wasn't long before she won
first place for "humorous radio"
in the International Broad-
casting Awards.
At 35, Ms. Gaynes was diag-
nosed with breast cancer, which
she combatted with a radical
mastectomy and chemothera-
py. She went into remission un-
til 1989, when a biopsy revealed
a recurrence of the disease.
Thus began a four-year battle
during which Ms. Gaynes said
she died many times, but al-
ways came back.

How Am A Gonna Find A
Man If I'm Dead? chronicles
Gonna Find A Man If I'm
Ms. Gaynes' many "last-
Dead?, published postmortem
ditch" efforts to survive.
by Morgin Press, is her gift to
Punctuated with Jewish
readers who yearn to laugh and
wit, it details her en-
live, despite cancer.
counters with
"Mine is the story I would
friends, doctors
like to have read when I was
and doctors who
embarking on all of this: a mod-
became her
el for leaving no stone unturned
friends.
— in English rather than Med-
"Fanny was
icalese. A tribute to friendship,
a comic. People
family, support, great doctors
loved being
and the urgency of humor," Ms.
around
Gaynes wrote in her introduc-
her,"
tion.
"...And mine is a story much
less about dying than it is about
coming alive. A true awaken-
ing: emotionally, spiritually,
physically, sexually, with love
and miracles, 'accidents' and
dreams — all the weird stuff
that, until I'd been through it,
I'd always referred to as `Hoo-
gie Moogie.' "
A native 'Detroiter, Ms.
Gaynes was born in 1946. She
grew up at Congregation
Shaarey Zedek, graduated
from Mumford High School
and attended the University
of Michigan.
Native Detroiter Fanny (Jill) Gaynes.

said her sister, Carol Silverman
of Bloomfield Hills.
Toward the end of her life,
while Ms. Gaynes was finish-
ing the book she started in
1990, the sisters spent weeks
together.
"She never felt sorry for her-
self," Ms. Silverman said.
`There was a fourth dimension
to Fanny. She always saw
things that others didn't. She
was very intuitive, very cre-
ative."
Even when her long, honey-
blond hair fell out after
chemotherapy, Ms. Gaynes con-
sidered unique alternatives:
"Amidst my otherwise total-
ly billiard-bald head remained
two discreetly placed corkscrew
tufts, one by each ear. My choic-
es were clear. I could enter the
Yeshiva or buy a wig."
At the end of her book, Ms.
Gaynes offers 10 points of ad-
vice to women in her situation.
Those, too, she couches in com-
edy. Point number five reads:
"You don't have to have all your
parts fixed to be whole."
Another point advises: "If
you're
con-
on-

cerned about dying young, try
something normally reserved
for older folks. My favorite:
putting on lipstick — crooked
— while looking into a cracked
mirror in a tearoom around 3:00
in the afternoon."
On Nov. 2, 1993, Ms. Gaynes'
funeral was held at Ira Kauf-

"I could enter
the Yeshiva or
buy a wig."

Fanny Gaynes

man Chapel in Southfield. A
close writer-friend, Marcia
Byalick, delivered the eulogy,
composed four years earlier as
an article for a newspaper. Said
Ms. Byalick:
"Leave it to Jill. I never had
to cope with what I was most
afraid of ...What I feared was
her fear, her depression. I didn't
count on the fact that my friend
of 20 years, who I would've
sworn I knew inside and out,
was a closet hero." El

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