Here's an account of Jim's last days from People magazine at the time of his death:
"Then on Friday, May 4, Henson was a guest on The Arsenio Hall Show. "He admitted he was tired, that he had a sore throat," says Novell. "But he insisted it would go away." True to form, instead of resting in L.A., he went shopping for antiques, then flew to New York for work on the Disney deal and Muppet projects.
On Saturday, May 12, on what was to be the last weekend of his life, Henson, along with daughter Cheryl, made one of his frequent trips to the rural farm town of Ahoskie, N.C., to visit his father and step-mother. "This was the one place he could come where he was totally private," says Barbara Henson. "We have a screen porch, and he just loved sitting out there. He said it was the quietest place he could be." That Saturday afternoon was spent playing a rousing game of croquet. "We all went out for supper," she says. "We had all the family here, maybe 10 or 12 of us, with the children. We just laughed and had a wonderful time."
That night, Henson and Cheryl stayed at a nearby motel, but on "Sunday morning he didn't want to get up," says Barbara. "We thought, 'Oh, he's tired. Let's let him sleep.' When Cheryl brought him over for lunch, he didn't feel like eating. He had the sniffles, and he looked tired. But this had been a busy few months for him lately, and we felt it was understandable."
Henson changed to an earlier flight home. "Coming back Sunday from the airport, he was really tired," says Cheryl. "He sat down on the side of the radiator [in the arrivals area], and I said, 'Oh, Daddy, are you okay?' And he said, 'I'm just tired.' Then he said, 'Hi ho, Kermit the Frog here.' It was very unlike him. I said, 'What, Daddy?'"
On Sunday, back in his three-bedroom apartment at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, with its panoramic view of Central Park, Henson tried to rest for a Muppet recording session the following day. "When I found out in the morning that he had canceled," says Cheryl. "I realized he really wouldn't do that unless he was sick."
On Monday she visited him, as did his assistant, Anne Kinney, and his son Johnny. "I called him, and he said he'd had a very rough night," says Jane, "but that Anne was there and Johnny was coming over. Everybody was coming in trying to give him chicken soup. I never stay over, I haven’t in years, but he asked me to stay."
Jane arrived at 7 P.M. and, alone with Jim, "we just talked. There was no division of broken marriage or anything like that. We were just there together."
By 2 A.M. Henson was having difficulty breathing and had been coughing up blood, though Jane didn't know for how long. "I remember saying, 'Can we go to the hospital? Can we call a nurse, a doctor?' " She says. "But he said, 'Just rub my back. Try to calm down my breathing.' At one point, he said, 'Maybe I'm dying.' He did say that. But, you know, whenever you're sick, you say, 'God, I feel like I'm going to die.'"
Still, he did not leave for a hospital. Part of the reason, says Jane, was his Christian Science upbringing. While he didn't practice the faith, "it affects his general thinking," says Jane. "Not that he mistrusted doctors, but he would rather just see it through by himself."
The more critical reason was that he just didn't want to bother anyone. "I think he knew there was a possibility he was dying," says Jane, "and that possibility was why he didn't want to go to a doctor. He really didn't want anyone else to be disturbed by his pain."
At 4 A.M. Henson finally told Jane, "I'm breathing too hard. My heart's racing.... Okay, I'll go to the hospital." They called for a car and were taken to New York Hospital but were left at the wrong entrance. Realizing his error, the driver offered to take them to another door, but Henson declined. Typically, he didn't want to inconvenience the man and walked a quarter block to the entrance.
By the time Henson was admitted, his body was rapidly shutting down. Initial X-rays showed small pockets of infection. Several hours later they had spread through his lungs. At 8 A.M. Henson was anesthetized and put on a ventilator. "He was still completely alert, but not comfortable," says Jane. "It was when he was anesthetized that we waved goodbye to him. He didn't say anything. He waved a little. They said we could see him in the intensive-care ward in a few hours."
They would not see him conscious again. Throughout that day, Jane, four of their five children, Frank Oz and a handful of friends kept vigil in the hospital corridor. "Evening came, and it was quiet,” says Jane. "We were comforting each other, tiptoeing back and forth to see him. They were giving him all kinds of antibiotics, trying to keep him alive long enough for them to take effect." At 1:21 Wednesday morning, after two cardiac arrests, his heart stopped beating for the final time."
Welcome to the Muppet Central Forum!
Jim Henson Idea Man
Back to the Rock Season 2
Bear arrives on Disney+
Sam and Friends Book
