Philippe Gildas: why his widow hid her illness from him until the end

On October 28, 2018, the famous journalist Philippe Gildas tragically died at the age of 82 following cancer. A disease that his wife, Maryse Gildas, hid from her until her last moments, as she had declared in Faustine Bollaert’s program It starts today.

“I learned about it in January 2018, and he left in October. In January, we are going to Tanzania, we had a very nice lodge and we had been there for 3-4 days so we were already getting our bearings. Then, a evening he said to me ‘I’m going to get my camera’ and he didn’t come back. That’s when I saw that he was disoriented. When we came back to Paris, he was eating a lot less, he was starting to lose weight” , she explained on February 1, 2023.

It was only during an appointment with a specialist that Maryse Gildas understood the seriousness of her illness. Her husband has cancer in his left kidney which has metastasized to the brain. “I didn’t tell him! He was getting dressed and I was all alone in the office. I didn’t tell him because he wasn’t in pain and he was still lucid (…) He never knew what he had,” she said.

Bedridden in palliative care, Philippe Gildas was able to count on the support of his wife who was present at his bedside until the last moments. In L’instant de Luxe, Maryse Gildas had mentioned the last lucid words of her husband: “You know, I’ve never cheated on you”, he told her. According to her, her husband left peacefully. “He was no longer the same man (…) he passed away slowly, I don’t even have the impression that he suffered,” she said.

Back to the photos of their couple in our slideshow.