Matthew Perry’s Stepfather Keith Morrison Shares How Their Family Is Fulfilling Actor’s ‘Dying Wish’ (Exclusive)
“He seemed to be so at peace,” says Keith, 77, a Canadian broadcast journalist and a correspondent for NBC’s Dateline. “He kept reaching out to embrace his family members. He hadn’t been the sort of person who’d call up and say, ‘Gosh, I love you. I miss you.’ But he was doing that all the time. You get a sense that he, I don’t know whether he had a premonition, or he had kind of accepted the inevitability he wasn’t going to be living as long as some people, and he wanted to embrace those who mattered to him.”
In an exclusive interview with Today alongside Keith and their daughters, Caitlin Morrison, Madeline Morrison and Emily Morrison, Suzanne said there was an “inevitability” of what was going to happen to her son.
She said just before he died he was showing her his new houses and 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 of 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.'”
“I think there was something… there was an inevitability to what was going to happen next to him, and he felt it very strongly,” she continued. “But he said, ‘I’m not frightened anymore.’ And it worried me.”
In their time of grief, Keith tells PEOPLE they are “finding a reason to be positive,” with the launch of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada.
While the Friends actor was known worldwide, Keith says there was nothing unique about his struggles. “We are like millions and millions of families who wake up one morning and get a phone call that their loved one had suddenly died from a drug overdose,” he says.
“It tears you apart,” he adds. “Matthew’s mother will never be the same. And every day, every minute, he’s on her mind. He’s on my mind. He’s on all of our minds.”
“We’re not unique,” he stresses. “Our son was famous. And those I meet on the streets who say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I appreciate every single one of them. And somehow I want them to know that I completely understand that we are just one family among millions who have suffered this same kind of loss and we’re one family because we know that his dying wish was to be remembered for helping other people, more than his famousness for Friends.”
“That has now become our mission in life is to carry that wish on,” says Morrison.
They remain focused on supporting others who are struggling. “It’s about finding ways to help,” he says. “One of the problems with rehab — the rehab centers are wonderful and they’re totally necessary — it’s something that we need better access to, especially for people who can’t afford the high price of some. But after that period of rehab, that’s when people are left to cope on their own, and frequently find that they can’t. They need additional help for maybe a year, two years, three years. They need a support system.”
“The Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada is really focused on that as much as anything else,” Keith explains. “Because that was Matthew’s problem. He was through a rehab center, he’d come out, he’d be fine for a few months, and then we discovered that he had secretly using from the time he got out of rehab. So finding some way to bridge the gap, to get people well and not just kind of get them clean, is a big part of this.”
The actor’s family also supports the work of the U.S.-based Matthew Perry Foundation. “I’d be very happy to pitch for both foundations,” he says. “For people who live and pay their taxes in the United States, to think about making a contribution to the matthewperryfoundation.org, and for people who live in Canada, to think about ways that they can help the matthewperryfoundation.ca.”
Yet, he adds, “The Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada where our hearts are. It’s where the boy grew up. It’s where our memories are.”
