Comedy legend Michael Palin admits that his grief after his wife Helen’s death two years ago isn’t ‘as strong’ now as it once was – though he still occasionally gets ‘dark days’
Monty Python legend Michael Palin has opened up movingly on living with grief – two years after the death of his beloved wife of 57 years, Helen. Marking two years since his devastating loss, the comedy icon, 82, opened up on the shift in his feelings of grief.
“I can see why people say it takes two years or so before your response gradually changes”, he told Saga Magazine’s July issue. “It becomes less about loss and more about the spirit of that person being around, so that’s very nice. I feel less grief now, and more that I’ve got to keep on doing things, looking after the children we made together.
He also confessed emotionally that he has conversations with his late wife as if she was still with him. “I talk to myself as if she’s there. I’ll show some spectacular bit of incompetence that I know she would have found funny, then I’ll hear myself saying something in the way she would have said it and I’ll laugh, even though I’m the only one there. Imagining her being there makes me laugh.”
The presenter and author, 82, was married to Helen, a teacher then bereavement counsellor, for 57 years after first meeting in 1959 on holiday in Southwold, Suffolk.. She died aged 80 of kidney failure in May 2023, having decided to give up dialysis treatment as she was, sadly, in too much pain to continue.
It was Helen, Palin has said previously, who first encouraged him to do his now renowned travel documentaries. And though his late partner was a bereavement counsellor herself, the star admits, he has avoided therapy to help process his grief so far – though he admits to struggling with ‘dark days.’
“I know myself quite well. I’d like to work it out myself, if I can. I get dark days, when you feel a bit down and wonder what you’re going to do on a cold autumn Sunday on your own, but I factor that in. I know I’m going to feel her loss at certain times.
He says his family – he and Helen had three children together – have been his therapy since Helen left them, explaining, “The family have been my bereavement counsellors really.”
“Fortunately, the three children all live quite close. You might see pagodas, volcanoes and waterfalls all round the world, but what’s really important is who comes round for dinner on a Sunday’
But Palin, who rose to fame as part of surrealist comedy troupe Monty Python, before appearing in a slew of classic movies like A Fish Called Wanda, then travelling the world for his acclaimed TV shows, says he doesn’t want to be dependent on his loved ones on a daily basis, and isn’t as bad at being alone as he first thought.
“I don’t cook, unfortunately. There were various areas like that where I thought I might be a bit vulnerable. But it turns out I’m quite good at being on my own. The other person who guides me through that is actually Helen.”
And the intrepid traveller shuns the idea of finding love again at his age – but he’s not self-pitying about his situation. “We were a unit for so long. You can never begin to replace a relationship which lasted 60 years. I’m OK living on my own, then I go off to Venezuela or somewhere. I’m not moping.”
The full interview with Michael Palin appearing in the July issue of Saga magazine can be read here.
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