Small Prophets and Monty Python actor Sir Michael Palin says returning to work and spending time with loved ones has helped him cope with his grief
Monty Python legend Sir Michael Palin has opened up about the continuing difficulty of adjusting to life on his own following the death of his wife, Helen Gibbins. The devastating loss occurred in May 2023, merely a month after the pair had marked 57 years of marriage.
Announcing the sad news to fans at the time, the 82-year-old said in a statement: “My dearest wife Helen died peacefully in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
“She had been suffering with chronic pain for several years, which was compounded a few years ago by a diagnosis of kidney failure.”
He added: “Her death is an indescribable loss for myself, our three children and four grandchildren. Helen was the bedrock of my life. Her quietly wise judgement informed all my decisions and her humour and practical good sense were at the heart of our life together.”
Helen had suffered prolonged chronic pain after complications from a knee replacement left her with nerve damage and restricted movement.
She was later diagnosed with kidney failure and pneumonia. Dialysis sustained her life for some time, until the family and medical team reached the heart-wrenching decision to cease treatment.
Speaking of his heartache over two years later, Sir Michael confessed he continues to find it challenging to transition from thinking in terms of “we” to “I”.
On the Marie Curie Couch podcast, he revealed: “I still say, ‘We’ve got [this] in our garden’, ‘We have four grandchildren’. I still use ‘we’. I find it impossible to say ‘I’.”
In a heartfelt chat with The Sunday Times, Sir Michael opened up about the final days of his wife Helen at a Marie Curie hospice.
He poignantly recalled how he had “never seen her happier in a way” during her last 10 days, adding: “She’d accepted it, we’d accepted it, she was in a wonderful hospice.
“The children and grandchildren had all come to see her, so her death was a great deliverance for her.”
Sir Michael’s love story with Helen began when they met as teenagers on a Suffolk holiday in 1959.
They tied the knot in April 1966 and were blessed with three children, Rachel, Thomas and William, and four grandchildren.
Following Helen’s passing, Sir Michael said throwing himself back into work and spending time with family helped deal with the “emptiness” he experienced.
This included a return to acting in the BBC sitcom Small Prophets, which marks his first on-screen role in seven years.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4, he expressed his attraction to the show’s “humour and magic”.
“This is not a story where you’ll have car chases and people wanting to kill each other,” he shared. “There’s a warmth in the way [ Mackenzie Crook ] writes about people.
“Every single character in this series gets their moment, however small it might be – it might be two lines or one line – and that line is thought out, careful, and is given to the actor as something special.”
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