Biography Sheds Light On Heartbreaking Details Of Robin Williams’ Final Days

We often follow the lives of celebrities and sometimes, we may feel that we know them just as well as we know people in our personal lives. After all, people make a living by following those celebrities around, taking pictures and reporting on even the most mundane happenings in their lives. Every once in a while, however, we hear something about celebrities and we suddenly realize that we don’t know much about them to begin with. That may be the case with Robin Williams. Perhaps you enjoyed his movies, his standup comedy or just watching him give an interview. In any case, he was a celebrity that was easy to love.

It’s difficult to believe that a number of years have already passed since Robin Williams died. Even though he has been gone for a while, people are still discussing him and the life that he lived. For some people, it may be looking back as far as his early years, doing standup comedy and playing on Mork and Mindy. For others, it may have been movies, such as Jumanji that we remember. He was a kind, funny and approachable individual. He was also somewhat private, and it took months before the world realized he had taken his own life.

Susan Schneider, his wife, told the world that the 63-year-old actor had committed suicide but he didn’t do so because of depression. He had a condition known as Lewy body dementia, a condition that can lead to depression, hallucinations and reduced motor function.

Schneider described the disease as “chemical warfare in the brain” and that “no one could have done anything more for Robin.”

In an interview with Good Morning America, she talked about how he struggled in the final months of his life. She was slowly watching him deteriorate before her eyes.

She spoke about a time that she found him on the bathroom floor bleeding after he hit his head. She asked him what went wrong and he just said, ‘I miscalculated’.

More details of Wiliams came to light, thanks to a biography written by Author Dave Itzkoff. It allows us to see even more of what took place during that time.

The book discusses some of the things that took place while he was filming Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, which will be his final movie.

“He was sobbing in my arms at the end of every day. It was horrible. Horrible,” makeup artist Cheri Minns recalled in the book. “I said to his people, ‘I’m a makeup artist. I don’t have the capacity to deal with what’s happening to him.’”

He even asked Williams if he would think about going back to doing standup again because the familiarity may be helpful.

“He just cried and said, ‘I can’t, Cheri. I don’t know how anymore. I don’t know how to be funny.’”

Williams didn’t know that he had Lewy body dementia. The doctors told him he had Parkinson’s disease, which also progressively attacks the nervous system.

Some of the symptoms that Williams had mimicked Parkinson’s disease, such as tremors, speech problems and impaired movement.

“I put myself in his place. Think of it this way: The speed at which the comedy came is the speed at which the terrors came,” Minns said in the book. “And all that they described that can happen with this psychosis, if that’s the right word — the hallucinations, the images, the terror — coming at the speed his comedy came at, maybe even faster, I can’t imagine living like that.”

A longtime friend of Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, talked about the diagnosis and how his friend was affected. Crystal said that his friend showed signs when he was at an outing.

“I hadn’t seen him in about four or five months at the time, and when he got out of the car I was a little taken aback by how he looked. He was thinner and he seemed a little frail,” said Crystal.

“He seemed quiet. On occasion, he’d just reach out and hold my shoulder and look at me like he wanted to say something. He hugged me goodbye, and Janice, and he started crying,” Crystal said. “I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m just so happy to see you. It’s been too long. You know I love you.’”

Crystal could see that his friend was slipping but Williams didn’t allow him to know everything that was taking place. He was later diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

His number comes up on my phone and he says, ‘Hey, Bill.’ His voice was high-pitched. ‘I’ve just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s,’ ” Crystal recalled. “I didn’t miss a beat. Because of my relationship with Muhammad Ali, I knew a lot of really good Parkinson’s research doctors. I said, ‘In Phoenix, the research center is great. If you want, we can get you in there. It would be totally anonymous. Do you want me to pursue that?’ Would you?’ ”

He added, “I never heard him afraid like that before. This was the boldest comedian I ever met — the boldest artist I ever met. But this was just a scared man.”

It would be after his autopsy that doctors would discover he had Lewy body dementia.

“I know now the doctors, the whole team was doing exactly the right things,” Schneider said in an interview with People. “It’s just that this disease was faster than us and bigger than us. We would have gotten there eventually.”

In an essay entitled The Terrorist inside My Husband’s Brain, Schneider revealed some details. She said that the day was spent going “all the things we love,” and “it was perfect – like one long date.” She thought maybe he was getting better but he took his life that night.

“I was getting in bed and he came in the room a couple of times and he said, ‘Goodnight, my love,’” Susan recalled. “And then, he came back again. He came out with his iPad, and he looked like he had something to do. And that was like, ‘I think he’s getting better.’ And then he said ‘goodnight, goodnight.’ That was the last.”

Schneider is using her situation to raise awareness for Lewy body dementia. She serves on the Board of Directors for The American Brain Foundation.

She also wants to give a message to anyone who may have tried to help her husband.

“I just want everyone to know that… everyone did the very best they could,” she said. “This disease is like a sea monster with 50 tentacles of symptoms that show when they want. And we can’t find it until someone dies definitively. There is no cure.”

The book is available on Amazon.