Teddi Mellencamp reveals father’s plans for family mausoleum amid cancer update

Teddi Mellencamp is opening up about the tough conversations she’s having amid her cancer journey.

The 43-year-old former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star confirmed on April 2 that her cancer reached Stage 4 after her melanoma, first diagnosed in 2022, metastasized to her brain and lungs.

On April 8, Mellencamp took to her “Two Ts In A Pod” podcast to discuss some of the hateful things she reads about her diagnosis in comments on social media.

While talking to her co-host Tamra Judge, the conversation gravitated to a recent phone call Mellencamp had with her rock star father John Mellencamp.

“Yesterday my dad calls 11 times in a row. Finally, I answer, I’m like, ‘I’m in the bath. Let me live a little, let me enjoy,’” Teddi Mellencamp said of the phone call.

“He goes, ‘I just want to make sure you’re going to be in our group family mausoleum,’” she recalled.

A mausoleum is a building or structure, often above ground, that provides a secure, durable and aesthetically appealing resting place for one or more people.

Teddi Mellencamp said she asked her father where her kids would be buried if she chose to be entombed in the mausoleum.

The reality star shares three kids — Slate, 12; Cruz, 10; and Dove, 5 — with estranged husband Edwin Arroyave, whom she filed for divorce from in November before learning of her latest diagnosis, per People.

“He’s like, ‘Well, there’s going to be the top five and then we’re gonna have little areas around it, and then that’s where everyone’s going to get buried,’” Teddi Mellencamp said of her father’s response.

Her father then suggested that she make the commitment now since she’s already working on her will.

The conversation sparked a memory of a quote Teddi Mellencamp was told by someone she “barely knew” — a quote she joked about putting on her tombstone.

“You wanna know the good news?” Mellencamp recalls this “stranger” saying to her. “Hot girls never die.”

“I was like, ‘That’s going on my tombstone,’” she quipped.

Mellencamp announced in October 2022 that she was diagnosed with Stage 2 melanoma after going to her doctor for a three-month skin check.

The podcaster has had 17 melanomas removed since 2022 — 11 of which were removed in December of that year, per People.

Despite thinking that she had beat the disease, Mellencamp took to Instagram in February to provide an update after “dealing with severe and debilitating headaches” for several weeks.

“After a CT scan and MRI, doctors found multiple tumors on my brain, which they believe have been growing for six months,” she wrote in a Feb. 12 Instagram post.

Mellencamp had four tumors removed from her brain, but doctors found five more that couldn’t be removed during surgery — including three on her brain and two on her lungs.

On April 2, she took to her Instagram Stories to confirm that her cancer had reached Stage 4.

Stage 4 is when the “cancer has spread (metastasized) outside of the original site to other organs or distant areas of your body,” according to the Cleveland Clinic.

“I kinda thought that I had already beaten it,” she said on her Instagram Stories, per People.

“And then a couple days later, I found out I had four more tumors. So there’s so many different highs and lows,” she continued.

On April 9, she posted a photo that showed the “difference 4 months makes.”

“Sometimes I am so focused on ‘being strong’ that I forget I am allowed to be sad, cry it out, and feel very alone,” she wrote in the caption.

“I love my kids, friends, and family so much and am forever grateful to them but dang today is one of those days,” she added.