It is a story that shivering has sent over the back of everyone with an old parent.
Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy, 65, dead within a few days in succession. They were not found for that long that the bodies were mummified.
There so much of us go for the grace of God. In our broken, selfish, insular lives.
Of course the hackmans had each other. They could not have guessed that she would die first, if only by days of a rare disease transferred by rats.
I can only imagine what Gene Hackman suffers from the Alzheimer's, until he also died. And the poor dog, left in a crate. Hackman had talked about how his wife had become his caregiver. Are everything.
There has been a lot of anger online that Hackman's children had not checked for them. She should have been sent to the house an unanswered telephone conversation.
Photos showed the daughters of Hackman Elizabeth and Leslie who walked into a restaurant the day after he died.
The sisters, who claimed that their 'withdrawn' father had been in good condition before his death, seemed to go well and even managed to lift a smile when they left the restaurant.
Photos showed the daughters of Hackman Elizabeth and Leslie who walked into a restaurant the day after he died. They seemed to be good and even managed to lift a smile while they left
Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy, 65, dead within a few days in succession. They were not found for that long that the bodies were mummified
Leslie had said that her father had been “in good health” in the run -up to his death and revealed that “he liked to do pilates and yoga, and that continued to do that several times a week.”
While she lives in California, she said it was a 'few months' because she had last seen or even heard from her father.
“We were close by. I had not spoken to them for a few months, but everything was normal and everything was good. '
There are many reasons why children fail their fragile parents – as I should know.
After my father died in his eighties, my mother went downhill. She stopped baking, gardening and even listened to the 'wireless'. She then stopped talking, but only two sentences Parrot: “I'm fine” and “I'm getting better.” What she was of course not.
The NHS sent drop-in caregivers, but the changing cast confused my mother. Only at night did she fear that someone had been broken into. So I hired a resident caregiver who was in her bed for ten years, surrounded by pulleys and commodes and hoists, cost me £ 30,000 – and I am not the child of a Hollywood star.
But I admit that I was negligent in the practical way. The caretaker Daria would set up the Christmas tree while I was too busy with my glamorous life to come up.
But parents need you to appear.
I imagine that the Hackman children were used to a gilded life, red carpets. What a shock to see their father in this state. I know that fear was a factor in my distance: I didn't know how to help my mother without crushing her. I found the scents disgusting. I didn't want to see her in that state. I used her confusion to say that I had been there for an hour when it had only been ten minutes. I hated the hourly ride from London to Essex and her poorly rented house while Daria, no relationship at all, held the ground floor flawless, the garden weed for a few twinkly blue eyes that would never see anything else than her bedroom ceiling.
And of course our mother's disability caused rows: why no longer do our brothers? Their excuse was that our mother did not want to see her naked or worse. Which is undoubtedly true. But they were packed in their own families.
The hackman children can, while they smile, mask guilt. Shame. No parent or even someone should end their days that way.
Dear God. People who leave a dog at home nowadays let a camera run to check that they are in order. I know I do that. One of the biggest movie stars suddenly became unseen. Shame us all.
