On March 2, Jean-Pierre Pernaut died at the age of 71. The journalist had been suffering from lung cancer for several months, but it was complications in the heart that arose after the declarations of stroke that really caused his disappearance. “He didn’t die of his lung cancer. At the last examinations last January, there was no trace. However, two months later, he left“, recalls his wife Nathalie Marquay during an interview for Galapublished this Thursday, May 19, 2022. And to specify: “The heart valve was damaged. (…) We had to operate on his heart to repair it with the risk that he will have another stroke during the operation“.
After that, everything went very quickly. “It got worse, he started wandering, his arm hurt badly, he was breathing badly, his kidneys weren’t working. (…) When the hospital called me in the evening to tell me that they must have put him to sleep, I understood that it was over“, assures Nathalie Marquay, who had sensed for 10 years that he would never celebrate his 72nd birthday.
Nathalie Marquay will in any case always have been at the bedside of her husband, just like her children. Because with Lou (19) and Tom (18 years old) but also the elders of JPP, Julia and Olivier (born from his first marriage with Dominique Bonnet), she forms a large united blended family. All of them went to the hospital in turn to visit Jean-Pierre Pernaut and exchange last words with him. Unfortunately, the journalist’s youngest son, Tom, is the only one who has not been able to see his father for the last time. “The children were able to see it before the operation. Except Tom. He had caught gastro the day before. It’s very hard for him not to have been by his side one last time“, revealed the 55-year-old ex-Miss France. Tom can still console himself at the idea of having had “an extraordinary father for all his children“.”He always protected them“, emphasizes the pretty brunette.
Life goes on for everyone now, but with difficulty as Jean-Pierre Pernaut leaves a “abyssal void“. However, the journalist is apparently never far away, according to the signs of the beyond that he sends to his family.