Richard E Grant remembers last words to beloved wife Joan Washington
13.09.2022 - 00:13
/ msn.com
died in September 2021 aged 74, eight months after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Reflecting on her death in his upcoming memoir, A Pocketful Of Happiness, Grant remembered the morning of September 2, which would be the day Washington died. He wrote of how she didn’t wake properly that morning, after doctors had warned him the day earlier she may die that evening, and he sat stroking her hand and ‘talking softly about some of the daft things we’ve done’.
Grant revealed his final words to Washington later that evening, as he encouraged her to let go: ‘At 7pm, her breathing slows quite suddenly. Keep repeating: “It’s all okay, my angel. Don’t hold on.
We all love you so. So, so much. ” ‘After each intake of breath, the gap until the next inhalation gets longer.
At 7. 25, I thought that her hand felt like it was cooling in mine. ’At 7.
30pm Washington died, with Grant calling for their daughter, Olivia, ‘to come quickly’. He said, in an extract obtained by Daily Mail: ‘Feels like my heart is going to explode out of my chest, such is the intensity of this grief. ’‘Even though we had warning that this was imminent,’ he noted: ‘NOTHING can properly prepare us for this moment.
’The Withnail & I star – who also spoke of the ‘extraordinary kindness’ of the new King Charles III after Washington’s diagnosis – went on to write that ‘in Gwyneth Paltrow-speak, we’ve now been de-coupled by death’. The actor, who described his new memoir as the ‘love story of my life’, married Washington in 1986 and they had a daughter, Olivia, now-32. Washington also had a son, Tom, from a previous relationship.