Robin Williams’ widow speaks up

Susan reveals comedian’s health was ‘disintegrating’ months before his death

NEW YORK: Comedian Robin Williams had been planning to undergo neurological testing the week before he committed suicide last year, and it’s likely he had only three years to live, his widow said on Tuesday.

In her first interview since Williams hanged himself with a belt at their California home, Susan Schneider Williams described how the Good Morning, Vietnam Oscar-winner was “just disintegrating” physically and mentally in the months before his death.

Williams died in August 2014 at age 63 and had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease three months prior to that. He was showing symptoms, including stiffness, slumping gait and confusion, she told ABC television show Good Morning America.



An autopsy found Williams also had Lewy body dementia, which caused a progressive decline in mental abilities, his widow said. “If Robin was lucky, he would’ve had maybe three years left. And they would’ve been hard years. And it’s a good chance he would’ve been locked up,” she said, referring to a doctor’s prognosis for the comedian.

After a lifetime of struggles with addiction, Williams had been “completely clean and sober” in the eight years before his death but his chronic depression had returned along with paranoia, she added.

The beloved actor was aware he was losing his mind and although he was keeping it together “in the last month, he could not. It was like the dam broke,” his widow told ABC. She added that in the last week of his life, doctors were planning on checking him into a facility for neurocognitive testing but he never talked about taking his own life.

“I just wanted to see my husband. And I got to see him and pray with him. And I got to tell him, ‘I forgive you 50 billion per cent, with all my heart. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known’. You know, we were living a nightmare,” she stated.

The actor’s third wife was speaking out after reaching a settlement last month with his three children from previous relationships that ended a bitter dispute over his estate and the dividing up of his personal belongings. 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th, 2015.

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