An emblematic figure of French literature, Françoise Sagan suddenly disappeared on September 24, 2004 at the age of 69 following a pulmonary embolism. The author of Hello sadness left in mourning his only son, Denis Westhoff.
In 2018, in the columns of the magazine Ici Paris, the photographer and writer confided in the last years of his life, in particular after the loss of his spouse Robert Westhoff. “My parents divorced very early but they continued to live together for eight or nine years. My mother strongly refused the idea of feeling attached to someone, which did not prevent them from loving each other passionately”, he had declared and to add: “The disappearance of my father, in 1990, following cancer was terrible for her”.
Françoise Sagan, who left a debt of almost around 1.2 million euros, was “bitter” at the end of her life, as her son had declared in the rest of the interview. “She accumulated everything: health problems, money problems, and problems with the law. (…) Deprived of everything, she lived, at the end of her life, staying with a friend. She who was always cheerful and refrained from recounting her troubles, was bitter and very disappointed, especially with regard to France, which she considered ungrateful… She quite rightly considered that she had contributed to a certain image of this country through her literature”.
In an interview with Paris Match in 2014, Denis Westhoff had revealed the last moments of life of his famous mother. “My last memory of her is the moment of her last breath, at Honfleur hospital. I stayed by her side until the end. Unconscious for a few days, she was fed by infusions”, he explained and to continue: “I had not seen fit to alert her loved ones, because I did not think that she could be so close to death. She had in her this incredible strength which had allowed her to escape several times from death, and I always imagined him victorious”.
Planet invites you to discover in photo the tomb of Françoise Sagan who rests in the cemetery of Seuzac.
