Robin Williams’ eldest child is honoring his late father with a heartbreaking and loving tribute on the ninth anniversary of the comedy icon’s death at 63.
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«Dad, on the 9th anniversary of your passing, I’m remembering you for your most excellent fashion choices,» Zachary Pym Williams wrote on Instagram on Aug. 12 alongside a photo of the Oscar, Grammy and Emmy winner wearing a fun outfit while playing tennis.
«These days are always hard,» Zak added, «and I love remembering you for being so very, very YOU. Love you so much!»
The «Mork & Mindy» and «Good Will Hunting» actor was found dead in his California home on Aug. 11, 2014. Authorities confirmed he died by suicide, and an autopsy report released months later further revealed what led to the «Dead Poets Society» actor’s tragic passing: He had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder «in which Lewy bodies (abnormal deposits of a protein called alpha‑synuclein) build up in areas of the brain that regulate behavior, cognition, and movement,» according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association. The disease — which can’t be confirmed with certainty until death — is often misdiagnosed when a person is alive.
That’s what happened to Robin, according to his widow, third wife Susan Schneider Williams. «A few months before he passed, he was given a Parkinson’s [disease] diagnosis,» the artist said at the 2022 Life Itself conference. «But that was just the tip of the iceberg.» According to CNN, the «Mrs. Doubtfire» star received the misdiagnosis in May 2014 after experiencing severe memory, movement, personality, reasoning, sleep and mood changes.
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Susan called the disease «the terrorist inside my husband’s brain» in a 2016 editorial for the journal Neurology in which she opened up about the famed improvisational actor’s death «at the end of an intense, confusing, and relatively swift persecution at the hand of this disease’s symptoms and pathology.»
A few weeks before Zak — who is Robin’s only child with first wife Valerie Velardi (Robin also had two kids, Zelda and Cody, with second wife Marsha Garces) — honored his father on the anniversary of his death, he took to Instagram to remember Robin on what would have been the comedian’s 72nd birthday — July 21. «Happy 72nd Dad!» Zak captioned a photo of Robin looking at the camera in a still from the 1987 movie «Good Morning, Vietnam.»
«Was remembering how much I used to love that look you’d give,» Zak explained. «That look with a mischievous, loving grin that your friends and loved ones knew so well. Joyous and curious and wondrous. Miss you and love you forever!»