Gyms are ridiculous with their requirements to quit. When my Dad was alive, I needed to cancel his gym membership because he could barely walk and it just wasn’t necessary anymore. They required that he show up in person to cancel the membership. So I had to get my Dad out there in a wheelchair or walker or whatever we were using at the time just to cancel something that we should’ve been able to cancel over the phone.
Lucky you got to it while he was still alive. They probably would have still enforced this policy if he had died and not yet canceled.
I can’t think of anything that would get them to end the policy faster than the manager having to deal with someone dragging a corpse in there.