The Heartbreaking Final Days of Original James Bond Sean Connery: A Tragic Battle with Dementia

Opinion

It’s been three years since Sean Connery, who was the original James Bond, died at the age of 90 after a battle with dementia. Now, sad new details are coming to light about his final days fighting this horrible disease.

Connery’s Final Days

In his new book “Connery, Sean Connery,” author Herbie J. Pilato talked to many of those closest to Connery to get a better understanding of the Scottish star. One of the people that Pilato talked to was Connery’s good friend Brendan Lynch, who revealed new details about the actor’s final days before he died on October 31, 2020.

“[Connery] died… at some beautiful ripe age, but had some measure of dementia,” Pilato told Fox News. “Dementia is not just a mental issue. You’re affected physically in other ways. It affects everything. So it’s not just the mind. And to see someone who was so strong battling this disease — it was difficult.”

“If anybody looked like a movie star, it was Sean Connery,” he continued. “But towards the end, when he was frail, it was hard to watch. It was hard to see that.”

Lynch Visited Connery ‘As Much As Possible’

In the book, Lynch alleged that Connery’s beloved wife Micheline Roquebrune had asked him to come visit Connery at his home in the Bahamas “as much as possible in his last days.”

“Because he wasn’t well at all, Micheline did ask me to try and see a bit more of him in the end,” Lynch recalled. “He didn’t want to have people that he didn’t know hanging around, so I would stop in to visit.”

“I was crying at times to see this mountain of a man — this monumental human achievement in such a terrible state — frail (mentally and physically) unable to carry on a conversation or finish off a sentence,”he added. “To see his body weak and flawed at the end… it was very sad. We tried to have a conversation. I tried to tell him what was going on in the sporting world, despite knowing that he wasn’t actually taking it all in.”

Connery’s Widow Speaks Out

Connery’s family decided to keep his condition private “for some time” so that he could spend his final days in peace surrounded by “sprawling golf courses, near wide-open silky sands and… clear blue Bahamian waters.” It was only after his passing that Roquebrune revealed that he’d had dementia.

“It was no life for him. It took its toll on him. He was not able to express himself latterly,” she told Daily Mail days after his death, adding that he “got his final wish to slip away without any fuss.”

“At least he died in his sleep, and it was just so peaceful,” she said. “I was with him all the time, and he just slipped away. It was what he wanted.”

Connery and Roquebrune were married from 1975 until he passed away in 2020.

“He was gorgeous and we had a wonderful life together,” she said of him. “He was a model of a man. It is going to be very hard without him, I know that. But it could not last for ever and he went peacefully.”

Connery was a true legend, and there will never be another one like him. While it’s sad that he suffered from dementia at the end of his life, we’re glad to see that he appears to have ended his days in a peaceful manner surrounded by those that he loved.