Robin Williams’ Son Zak Celebrates What Would Have Been His Dad’s 70th Birthday

Robin Williams’ family is continuing to celebrate his memory nearly seven years after his death. On what would have been the late actor’s 70th birthday on Wednesday, Williams’ son, Zak Williams, took to social media to pen an emotional tribute to his father, who died by suicide in August 2014, in honor of his birthday.

Taking to Instagram to mark the occasion, Zak shared a throwback black-and-white image of his famous father. Zak went on to share a message to his father in the caption, writing, “Dad, on what would be your 70th birthday, I would want you to know that your incredible spirit lives within us. Our family will be celebrating you and your memory today. We miss you and love you always!” The 38-year-old shared the same photo to his Twitter, where he wrote, “Today would be 70. Missing you especially much today. Love you always evermore.”

Zak is Williams’ son from his first marriage to Valerie Velardi in 1978. The late actor is also father to daughter Zelda Williams and son Cody from his marriage to Marsha Garces. Although Zelda did not commemorate her father’s birthday on Wednesday with a post, she wrote in a tweet just a day later that she celebrated her father “in my own way yesterday, grateful for the space to do so. It’s gotten a little less strange over the years, and I’ve gotten a bit less scared of being me in the face of it. All things in time I guess…”

Williams passed away on Aug. 11, 2014 at age 63. His death came a year after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In a September interview with the Today show, Susan Schneider Williams, his widow, said her late husband died of diffused Lewy body dementia, a disease that can lead to problems with thinking, memory and movements. In the years since his passing, Robins’ family has continued to keep his memory alive and have opened up about their loss, with Zak admitting on the Apple TV+ series The Me You Can’t See that “it was hard to separate initially the process of privately grieving versus sharing the grieving with the general public, both the American public and the world.”

“I found myself extremely emotionally disregulated and feeling vulnerable and exposed when I wasn’t ready to be vulnerable. And that created a major challenge for me,” he said, adding that from his end, he did not “get a chance to focus on the private grieving process until about a year and a half after my dad passed away, meaning that I didn’t recognize that I needed to grieve privately.”

If you or someone you know are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741-741.