Robin Williams’ widow Susan Schneider Williams opened up about what she called the “invisible monster” the late star was being chased by before he died from suicide in 2014.
“Robin and I knew there was so much more going on,” Schneider Williams told the “Today” show in a piece published Tuesday. “Robin was right when he said to me, ‘I just want to reboot my brain.’ In that moment I promised him that we would get to the bottom of this and I just didn’t know that would be after he passed.” (RELATED: Tupac, Robin Williams Caught Traveling In Arizona With Thousands Of Ounces Of Marijuana)
“I was called in to sit down to go over the coroner’s report,” she added. “They sat me and down and said he essentially Robin died of diffused Lewy body dementia. They started to talk about the neurodegeneration. He wasn’t in his right mind.” (RELATED: Wife Reveals What Drove Robin Williams To Suicide: ‘It Was Not Depression’)
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“Lewy body dementia is a devastating illness,” Dr. Bruce Miller, director Memory and Aging at the University of California San Francisco shared. “It’s a killer. It is fast, it’s progressive. This was about as devastating a form of Lewy body dementia as I had ever seen. It really amazed me that Robin could walk or move at all.”
Williams’ widow went on to explain that she “was relieved it had a name. Robin and I had gone through this experience together, really being chased by an invisible monster. And it was like whack-a-mole with the symptoms. I left there with a name of the disease, the thing that Robin and I had been searching for.”
At one point, the late star’s wife said that the “Jumanji” star had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but worried he had dementia or some type of schizophrenia, per the outlet.
“I saw a guy who wasn’t himself and he thought that was unforgivable,” “Night at the Museum” director Shawn Levy shared in the documentary from Schneider Williams called, “Robin’s Wish” out on September 1 on demand and on digital platforms.
As his condition progressed, doctors advised that the husband and wife sleep in separate beds.
“He said to me, ‘Does this mean we’re separated?’ Williams’ widow said. “And that was a really shocking moment. When your best friend, your partner, your love, you realize that there’s a giant chasm somewhere, and you can’t see where it is. But that’s just not based in reality. That was a hard moment.”
“I asked him, ‘When we get to the end of our lives and we’re looking back, what is it we want to have done?'” she added. “Without missing a beat, he said, ‘I want to help people be less afraid.’ I thought it was beautiful. And I said, ‘Honey, you’re already doing that. That’s what you do.’ And that is pretty great.”