Monty Python’s Sir Michael Palin shares heartbreaking preparations for death following loss of his wife
Monty Python legend Sir Michael Palin has opened up about his will in an emotional interview, revealing that his children “will know where to find what they need to find should I die.”
The 82-year-old, who was married to Helen Gibbins for nearly 60 years before she died from chronic kidney disease, discussed his thoughts on mortality during a recent interview on the Marie Curie podcast.
Palin said: “I do think about death, and my family is incredibly supportive about it. They often ask, ‘Have you made a will? Can I be in your will?’ I’ve made my will, and my children know exactly where to find what they need if something happens to me.”
The star admitted his three kids, Thomas, 56, William, 54, and Rachel, 50, have all his passwords in case he gets “run over by a bus”.
“I’m 82 now, which is longer than any Palin male has lived for 200 years. I keep fit, and I’m working, fortunately, and doing some quite difficult stuff, such as filming and all that.”
The actor met his late wife Helen when they were both teenagers on a summer trip to Suffolk in 1959.
“I kid myself that I’m going to be alright, and yet I know that I won’t because you feel tired at certain times.
“You’re slightly unsteady as you get out of bed, and you think, ‘What’s happening?’ Well, the old car’s getting a bit rusty.
“However fit you are, anything might happen,” he said, “But I don’t dwell on mortality. I dwell on life.”
The Monty Python star has battled health issues of his own, undergoing open-heart surgery in 2019 to repair a valve.
“That saved my life, really” he said of the life-changing surgery. “And so I’ve been through that, which I think is quite important – to know that your body is vulnerable. And the older you get, the more vulnerable it is.”
He spoke lovingly about his late wife, and how at times he didn’t think he would be able to continue without her.
“There was a time when I didn’t think it was going to get better. I thought, gosh, it’s just going to be poignant days. I’m going to break down into tears every now and then.
“It does get better, and it does adjust. And after two years, now I feel I could think of Helen. I’m surrounded by her anyway. I’ve got photos. I haven’t got rid of anything to do with her. The family embodied what she was to them, and that’s all that made it much, much easier.”
Helen was a teacher and then a bereavement counsellor, before she died of kidney failure aged 80 in 2023.
She was receiving dialysis treatment, however chose to stop because she was in so much pain.
In a previous interview with The Guardian, he admitted that once reaching 80, the same age as his late wife was when she passed, he doesn’t know what’s around the corner.
“I sometimes think: she lived to be 80, I’m 80 now, so what’s next? What do you do with the rest of the time? Partly, I think, well, at 80 you’re on your way to the departure lounge.”
When asked if he would find someone else to share the rest of his senior years with, he said he could only ever spend his life with Helen.
“Oh, I just can’t imagine anybody else taking Helen’s place. I always listen to Helen. I mean, I’m kind of in touch with her on a daily basis because I know what she would think about all the various things that I do.”
Palin had said to The Sunday Times just after his wife’s passing, that she had relied on dialysis for “so many years” in order to “keep her alive”, that she eventually “took the decision, along with the children and the doctors, to give it up”.
He added he had “never seen her happier in a way” than during the final 10 days of her life.
Palin notably starred in hit British comedy troupe show Monty Python, alongside John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Terry Jones.
He received the Bafta Fellowship in 2013, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.