Gill had at least one heart attack in the years before his last day, though he probably had more. We know he was also suffering from angina in the months leading up to his death, as there are letters by Gill to his wife about his pain.

At some point during the day of October 7, 1936, he suffered another serious, though at first, non-fatal heart attack. At the time of this heart attack, he was on their property in Carlsbad. We don't know who he was with, but we can presume he was transported quickly to the San Diego Hospital in Hillcrest, San Diego, as he was alive when he arrived. We also don't know why he traveled all the way to Hillcrest from Carlsbad, a thirty-mile trip. For example, the Scripps Hospital in La Jolla would have been a little closer.

He was conscious when he was admitted to the hospital. We do not know what friends or family members might have been there, but his nephew Louis's home was no more than a mile away. His wife was likely at their primary home in Palos Verdes, ninety miles north of Carlsbad, 120 miles north of the hospital.

Gill's heart ultimately failed, and he died later that same day. That day, or the next, his body was transferred to Cypress View Mortuary, also in San Diego. He was then cremated on October 8, 1936. To be cremated so quickly after death, we can presume that it was at the direction of the family, though there is no record of who gave this instruction. It is fair to assume that Marion was involved in this decision-making, even though she was not likely in San Diego at that time.

Gill's ashes were placed in a temporary cardboard box with a typed label. A handwritten note on the side of the box said, "Hold." The box was placed on a storage shelf at the mortuary, awaiting a family member's retrieval.

Time passed; a lot of time.

In the 1980s or early 1990s, while Bruce Kamerling was researching his book on Gill (published in 1993), he was told a story, presumably by a descendant of nephew Louis Gill (1885-1969), that someone had given Gill's ashes to Marion and that she scattered them. Kamerling was the first historian to write about Gill's remains. Other historians would repeat Kamerling's narrative.

More time passed.

Around 2021, volunteers from the Find-a-Grave website (findagrave.com) went to the historic Cypress View mausoleum in San Diego and documented the paper records of the permanent and temporary interned. There were many. In mid-2022, a Gill aficionado was looking for Gill's gravesite on the Find-a-Grave website. He found the recently added record that indicated Gill's ashes were at Cypress View. He contacted the Irving J. Gill Foundation for more information. That Gill’s ashes where at Cypress View was news to IJGF as, like others, we had believed the Kamerling narrative. Naturally, we followed up with Cypress View and confirmed that Gill's ashes were indeed in their possession and had been since 1936. They also confirmed that they were still in the original temporary cardboard box, still on a shelf in a closet, and still being "held" awaiting a family member's retrieval. We were shocked at this revelation.