Death
It was announced in May 2009 that McCourt had been treated for melanoma and that he was in remission, undergoing home chemotherapy. On July 19, 2009, he died from the cancer, with meningeal complications, at a hospice in Manhattan, a month before his 79th birthday.
His mother, Angela Sheehan McCourt, and father, Malachy Gerald McCourt, predeceased him, in 1981 and 1985, respectively. He was survived by his brothers Malachy, Michael, and Alphie. His last surviving brother Malachy wrote a third memoir, Death Need Not Be Fatal, at age 85 with Brian McDonald, talking of his own life, missing his brother Frank, and life after 30 years of alcoholism had ended.
McCourt's ashes were shared among his brothers, his wife, and his daughter. On July 18, 2017, eight years after his death, his daughter Maggie spread her share of the ashes in Limerick, travelling there with her two sons, Jack and Avery, and his widow Ellen McCourt. They scattered them in two places: at the ruins of Carrigogunnell Castle which overlooks the River Shannon at Clarina, a place where he rode a bicycle as a boy, dreaming of going to America; and at Mungret Abbey, where members of her Sheehan family are buried, which he mentioned to his daughter, but then said to her that it would be too much trouble to do that. Maggie did it anyway. The portion with his brothers are in an urn buried where the playwright Arthur Miller is buried, at Great Oak Cemetery, Roxbury, Connecticut.
While his family were in Limerick, Angela’s Ashes – The Musical opened in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin on Thursday night, after a sell-out run in Limerick. The Frank McCourt Museum opened in the former Leamy's School, Limerick, curated by Úna Heaton. The Frank McCourt Museum closed in October 2019, after 10 years in operation. McCourt's papers are at Glucksman Library in the University of Limerick. Items in the museum were auctioned in 2020, and are now on display at the People's Museum in Limerick.
