It’s a story that sent shivers down the spine of anyone with an aged parent.
Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy, 65, dead within days of each other. They weren’t found for so long that the bodies were mummified.
There but for the grace of God go so many of us. In our fractured, selfish, insular lives.
Of course the Hackmans had each other. They cannot have guessed she would die first, if only by days, of a rare rat-borne disease.
I can only imagine what Gene Hackman, suffering from Alzheimer’s, went through until he too died. And the poor dog, left in a crate. Hackman had spoken of how his wife had become his carer. His everything.
There has been much anger online that Hackman’s children had not checked up on them. An unanswered phone call should have sent them speeding to the house.
Photos showed Hackman’s daughters Elizabeth and Leslie walking into a restaurant the day after he died.
The sisters, who claimed their ‘reclusive’ father had been in good shape before his death, seemed to be coping well and even managed to raise a smile as they left the diner.
Photos showed Hackman’s daughters Elizabeth and Leslie walking into a restaurant the day after he died. They seemed to be coping well and even managed to raise a smile as they left
Gene Hackman , 95, and his wife, Betsy, 65, dead within days of each other. They weren’t found for so long that the bodies were mummified
Leslie had said her father had been ‘in good health’ in the lead up to his death, revealing that ‘he liked to do Pilates and yoga, and he was continuing to do that several times a week.’
As she lives in California, she said it’s been a ‘few months’ since she had last seen or even heard from her father.
‘We were close. I hadn’t talked to them for a couple months, but everything was normal and everything was good.’
There are many reasons children fail their fragile parents – as I should know.
After my dad died in his eighties, my mum went downhill. She stopped baking, gardening, even listening to the ‘wireless’. She then stopped talking, parroting just two phrases: ‘I’m fine’ and ‘I’m getting better’. Which she of course wasn’t.
The NHS sent drop-in carers but the changing cast confused my mum. Alone at night she feared someone had broken in. So I hired a live-in carer, who over the ten years my mum lay in her bed, surrounded by pulleys and commodes and hoists, cost me £30,000 – and I’m not the child of a Hollywood star.
But I admit I was remiss in practicalities. The carer Daria would put up the Christmas tree while I was too busy with my glamorous life to turn up.
But parents need you to show up.
I imagine the Hackman children were used to a gilded life, red carpets. What a shock to see their father in this state. I know fear was a factor in my distance: I didn’t know how to help my mum without bruising her. I found the smells revolting. I didn’t want to see her in that state. I used her confusion to say I’d been there for an hour when it had only been ten minutes. I resented the hour-long drive from London to Essex and her shabby rented house while Daria, no relation at all, kept the downstairs spotless, the garden weeded for a pair of twinkly blue eyes that would never see anything but her bedroom ceiling.
And of course our mum’s incapacity caused rows: why don’t our brothers do more? Their excuse was that our mum would not have wanted them to see her naked or worse. Which is doubtless true. But they were wrapped up in their own families.
The Hackman children might, as they smile, be masking guilt. Shame. No parent or indeed anyone should end their days in that manner.
Dear God. People who leave a dog at home these days leave a camera running to check they are okay. I know I do. One of the greatest stars of film suddenly went unseen. Shame on all of us.
