That is definitely one way to hear about death, though I feel also an increasingly common one (I don't know if I'm biased due to recent experience or just from memory as I've drifted through a few online communities and obviously that's the only way you ever find out sometimes).
Very sad that it was illness and not a ripe old age :<
Hope your encouragement and any markedly different solutions that emerge are accepted and welcomed.
Hopefully they will, but there's not much time left for that :) And that's okay (no, I'm not dying) - at least, not to my knowledge!