No parent should have to bury their child. As heartbreaking as it is, though, one must eventually learn to accept death’s inevitability. Although for Matthew Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, she has said her last conversation with her son felt like a foreboding premonition of his demise.
Morrison recalled the last tender moment she shared with the “Friends” star before his death in a heartrending interview with TODAY. According to her, she sensed something was wrong, as if her son was saying goodbye.
“He went through a period, interestingly enough, just before he died when he was showing me one of his new houses. He came up to me and he said, ‘I love you so much, and I’m so happy to be with you now,” she shared.
“It was almost as though it was a premonition or something. I didn’t think about it at the time, but I thought, ‘How long has it been since we’ve had a conversation like that?’ It’s been years,” Morrison continued, then added: “There was an inevitability to what was going to happen next to him, and he felt it very strongly. But he said, ‘I’m not frightened anymore’ and it worried me.”
Perry died from a fatal ketamine overdose at the age of 54 at his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28, 2023. He was found unconscious in a hot tub and reported to have drowned from the drug’s acute effects.
Nearly a year since his death, his stepfather Keith Morrison, and his younger sister, Caitlin Morrison, have also reflected on their loss in an interview with HELLO! Canada. Speaking for the first time about her brother’s death, Caitlin, 43, shared what she has been doing in his honor. She said her work as executive director of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada makes her feel like she’s “sitting right next to Matthew, working with him every day on something that was important to him.”
“I have this treasure of getting to keep him very, very close to my life all the time, which is wonderful,” she said.
Caitlin also shared some of the fond memories she had with her brother, especially the effect he had on those around him. She marveled at his “ability to fill up a room with light. When people were in a room with [Matthew], there was this magnetic energy. Everybody just had a smile on their face and they clung to everything that he said.”
Caitlin also spoke about the loss of her brother in an op-ed for the Toronto Star published on Oct. 24. She admitted that the pain she felt after his death was not “unique” but “unusual” because of the public nature of his life and death. She wrote: “Loss is a lonely business, and sharing my loss with the world took some of the loneliness out of it.”
Meanwhile, Dateline correspondent and husband to Perry’s mother, Keith Morrison said Perry’s death was “incredibly shocking” despite the family being privy to his struggles with sobriety. He explained: “Anybody who has lost a child will tell you that, even if you are in some way prepared for the possibility, it’s shattering.”
The comedian struggled with alcohol and drug addiction all through his life. But despite his personal battles, he vowed to help those others struggling like him through the Matthew Perry Foundation, which has offices both in the U.S. and Canada. Keith said the family will continue the actor’s work as he “would like to be remembered for doing something to help people suffering from addiction.” He said they have decided to “hang on to that determination and try to do something useful” in his honor.
Published: Oct 25, 2024 12:03 pm