When Jo Wilder learned she had lung cancer, there wasn’t much time for her family to adjust to what came next.

She was 94. Rather than undergo treatment, Wilder chose to work with a death doula and plan what her daughter Jennifer Grey described as a peaceful transition. One week after learning of the diagnosis, Wilder died on July 4, 2026.

Those final days gave the family something time doesn’t always provide: a chance to say things while Wilder could still answer.

Grey, 66, is the Dirty Dancing star and one of Wilder’s two children with actor Joel Grey. Wilder, a former Broadway actress, had been married to Joel for 24 years before they divorced in 1982. Their other child is James Katz.

Her Mother Wanted to Choose Her Final Days

Grey later spoke about those days on the Waking Up with Ryan podcast, as first reported by PEOPLE.

For Wilder, accepting that she was dying did not mean leaving every conversation unfinished. Grey said her mother made choices about how she wanted to spend the time she had and what she wanted to address before she died.

“You have [a] choice in the matter with this diagnosis,” Grey said on the podcast.

She described wanting people facing death to have the chance to make their wishes clear and “clean up whatever there is to clean up.”

One of those conversations involved Grey’s father.

Joel visited his former wife at her bedside. Decades had passed since their separation, yet he spoke to Wilder about what their marriage had meant to him. He told her that the day they married had been the first time he had felt whole.

The years between them hadn’t all been easy. Still, Joel told her that what remained important to him was the love they shared.

Wilder paused before answering.

“All is forgiven,” she said. “It feels free.”

Jennifer Had Her Own Words to Say

For Grey, watching her parents reach that place came during a week when she was also thinking about her own relationship with her mother.

Wilder had once been a promising actress on the New York stage. Grey later wrote that her mother chose raising Jennifer and James over continuing to pursue that ambition. Her interests found other places to go: activism became a large part of her life, and she eventually shared her sense of style through Wilder Place, her store on Melrose.

Grey saw pieces of her mother in herself.

Some were large, tied to childhood and the woman who raised her. Others were so ordinary that they might never have made it into a formal tribute.

That distinction began to matter.

Memorials often gather those details after someone dies. Families stand up and explain what the person gave them, what made them laugh and which small traits they still carry.

Grey decided she didn’t want her mother to miss that part.

The Eulogy Arrived While Jo Could Still Read It

Before Wilder died, Grey sat down and completed an exercise.

She wrote her mother an email.

Grey called it a “living eulogy,” but instead of describing Wilder’s life from a distance, she wrote about herself. She listed “all the things that are great about me that I got from her.”

The list moved between the meaningful and the wonderfully specific.

Grey mentioned their matching breasts and nail beds. She thanked her mother for ballet class and “yummy lotions.” These weren’t words prepared for a service or saved in a document to be read after Wilder’s death.

Wilder got to read them herself.

Then she called her daughter.

“She called me crying because she was so moved,” Grey recalled.

The moment changed the way Grey thought about the language people often save for funerals. The things said after someone dies may be sincere, but the person being described is no longer sitting in the room to receive them.

For Grey, her mother was.

The Tribute Didn’t Have to Wait

After Wilder’s death, Grey did write publicly about her mother.

On Instagram, she described Wilder as “gorgeous and talented” and remembered the young actress who stepped away from one possible life to raise her children. She wrote about her mother’s activism, her creativity and the store through which other people came to know her eye for design.

Grey also wrote about the way her mother approached death. Wilder had learned about her lung cancer only a week before July 4, yet her daughter said she chose to leave “on her own terms.”

By then, though, Wilder had already heard some of the words that mattered most.

She had heard Joel speak about the love that survived the difficult parts of their marriage. She had been able to answer him herself.

And she had opened an email from her daughter that named the pieces of Jo Wilder still visible in Jennifer Grey, right down to their nail beds and the lotions her mother had introduced her to.

Grey’s public tribute ended with thanks to her mother for showing her how to face even her final days. But on the podcast, she kept returning to the fact that Wilder had received her daughter’s tribute while she was alive.

“What a sad thing to have someone say this after you’re not in the room,” Grey said.