The Brown-Wynne funeral home says a service will be held 1 p.m. Saturday, December 11 at Edenton Street United Methodist Church, 228 W. Edenton Street, Raleigh.
A private graveside service will follow at Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh. Edwards is to be buried next to her son Wade who died in a 1996 car accident.
It will be the final goodbye to the woman who inspired many with her resilience in the face of incredible adversity.
Despite the death of Wade, a six-year battle with breast cancer, and a humiliating betrayal by her husband, she soldiered on - sharing her story and using her celebrity to advocate for health reform.
"We can look at that face of courage and realize we can have that, too," said Darlene Gardner, 62, who runs a cancer support group and founded a store in Cary that provides wigs and other items for those with the disease. "It shows you that, in spite of everything that's going on, you can come through anything."
Edwards and her family announced on Monday that doctors had told her that further cancer treatment would do no good. She thanked supporters on her Facebook page.
"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered," she wrote. "We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."
Edwards died Tuesday surrounded by her three children, siblings, friends and her estranged husband, John. She was 61.
Immediately after her death, the family shared this statement:
Elizabeth Anania Edwards, mother, author, advocate died today at her home in Chapel Hill, surrounded by her family.
Today we have lost the comfort of Elizabeth's presence but she remains the heart of this family. We love her and will never know anyone more inspiring or full of life.
On behalf of Elizabeth we want to express our gratitude to the thousands of kindred spirits who moved and inspired her along the way. Your support and prayers touched our entire family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Wade Edwards Foundation which benefits the Wade Edwards Learning Lab at www.wade.org.
Edwards' final days were in the company of her surviving children and their father.
"He loved Elizabeth," David "Mudcat" Saunders, a political adviser and friend of the family, said of John Edwards. "You climb that many mountains and you go through the deepest valley that two people can possibly go through together -- the loss of a child -- and that makes for an incredible bond."
Saunders relayed a scene from Monday, told to him by John Edwards, when their youngest child, 10-year-old Jack, came in the room to tell his mother he loved her. She smiled at him and said, "I love you, too, sweetie," Saunders said.
Edwards shared her life struggles in memoirs. In a series of book events starting in 2006, her insights brought women who confided in Edwards about how they dealt with hair loss from treatments or how her words helped them cope with lost children.
In her book "Saving Graces," Edwards talked about collapsing in the aisle of a grocery store after seeing her son's favorite soda -- Cherry Coke-- a few months after he died in a car accident at the age of 16. Later, she wrote about how physically grueling the cancer treatments were. This year, she detailed in a new chapter to her second memoir how difficult it was to leave her husband of 30 years after his infidelity.
"In her life, Elizabeth Edwards knew tragedy and pain," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "Many others would have turned inward; many others in the face of such adversity would have given up. But through all that she endured, Elizabeth revealed a kind of fortitude and grace that will long remain a source of inspiration."
On Facebook, an Elizabeth Edwards fan page was inundated with several posts a minute after her death was announced. Many of those offering condolences mentioned their own experiences with cancer, or those of their relatives.
"People identified with her and saw how courageous she was under extemely difficult circumstances," said Barbara Chassin, a 62-year-old cancer survivor from Phoenix, in an interview. "Also, she was fairly realistic about her prognosis, and that's a good thing."
Dr. Linda Vahdat, an oncologist and director of the Breast Cancer Research Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, said Edwards' public discussions about her diagnosis, illness and treatment has helped has helped raise awareness. She said her breast cancer patients were talking about Edwards on Tuesday.
"They're sad," Vahdat said. "People have always been rooting for her."
The Edwardses' son Wade died before John Edwards turned to politics. Two of their three children, Emma Claire and Jack, were born after his death, joining daughter Cate.
Elizabeth Edwards advised her husband during his successful 1998 Senate campaign in North Carolina and his presidential runs in 2004 and 2008. Doctors found a lump on her breast in 2004, in the final days of her husband's vice presidential campaign, and she was later diagnosed. The Democratic John Kerry-John Edwards ticket lost to incumbent President George W. Bush.
After treatments, doctors found her to be cancer-free, but in early 2007, shortly after John Edwards launched a second bid for the White House, the couple learned that her cancer had returned in an incurable form.
"We are not in denial," Edwards wrote in an updated version of her first memoir published in 2007. "I will die much sooner than I want to. I will leave a splendid man and an amazing daughter with yet another funeral to attend when they place me in the ground next to Wade and I will not be able to comfort them. And I will leave two magical children whom I love with all my being too early."
Her husband added to her suffering with an affair with videographer Rielle Hunter that he publicly acknowledged in 2008. Instead of playing a role in the final weeks of the presidential race, which Edwards had quit after poor primary showings, he and Elizabeth retreated almost entirely from public life.
Hunter had a baby that John Edwards insisted was not his until January 2010, when he acknowledged he had fathered the child. A week later, friends revealed that he and Elizabeth had separated.
While Elizabeth Edwards pleaded for privacy, she also wrote a memoir -- her second -- that discussed how the affair repulsed her. She went on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to talk about it, but only on the condition that Winfrey not mention Hunter's name.
Edwards said in interviews that it didn't matter whether her husband had fathered a child with Hunter, saying, "that would be part of John's life." Still, she stood by him.
"Nothing will be quite as I want it, but sometimes we eat the toast that is burned on one side anyway, don't we?" she wrote in the memoir, "Resilience."
With no campaign to focus on, Elizabeth Edwards returned to advocacy work, appearing on her own and often without any mention of her husband to push for universal health care. She often wondered aloud about the plight of those who faced the same of kind of physical struggles she did but without her personal wealth.
Ellen Schoenfeld, a breast cancer survivor in New York, said Edwards "faced her illness with a ton of strength and a lot of hope and faith. She took it on with such grace and dignity."
Schoenfeld said Edwards gave other people with cancer "the motivation to live their lives the way they want to live them," she said. "People might think you need to change the way you live when you get a diagnosis like that, but she wanted to maintain a sense of normalcy, for her kids and for herself, too. I think she just wanted to live as normal a life as possible."
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