Father Of The Bride star Kimberly Williams-Paisley announces her mom has died after decade-long battle with dementia

By Dailymail.com Reporter

Published: 20:12 EST, 17 November 2016 | Updated: 02:51 EST, 18 November 2016

Kimberly Williams-Paisley announced via social media on Thursday that her mother has died.

Linda Payne Williams, who suffered from dementia, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 73.

The Father Of The Bride star had documented her mother's descent into dementia in her memoir Where The Light Gets In, published this past April.

RIP: Kimberly Paisley-Williams shared this photo of herself with her mom Linda last Mother's Day. On Thursday the actress announced via social media that her 73-year-old mom had died

Kimberly, 45, posted a photo of her mom as a smiling happy young woman to her Instagram with the caption: 'I will remember you this way, Mom. Rest in love and peace. Linda Williams: June 22nd, 1943-November 16, 2016.'

The Father Of The Bride star had documented her mother's descent into dementia in her memoir Where The Light Gets In, published this past April.

She revealed in the book that it was when she told her mom about her engagement to country music star Brad Paisley in 2002 that she first noticed something was off in her behavior.

Her mother greeted the news, she said, with silence.

Loss: The Father Of The Bride star shared a throwback photo and a moving message in tribute to her mom who had been suffering from dementia for more than a decade

Early signs: Kimberly, who's married to Brad Paisley, revealed in her recent memoir that when she told her mother about her engagement in 2002 she was met with silence, and that was when she first realized her mom's behavior was changing

As for sharing the experience of having a parent with dementia, she told Robin Roberts in a 2014  interview on ABC's Good Morning America: 'There was a long time … that she didn't want us to talk about it, and that was so much a part of the stress of what we were all going through, was that we had to hide it and cover up for her, and protect her pride.'

'And I just felt like we were at a point where our story could help other people,' she explained.

Candid: The actress, pictured at the CMA Awards on November 2, published a memoir in April in which she described her mother's descent into dementia 

Linda Payne Williams was diagnosed with rare primary progressive aphasia in 2005.

Prior to that she had worked as a fundraiser for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, raising millions of dollars to fund research into the neurological disease.

She is survived by her husband Gurney Williams, a sister, daughters Kimberly and Ashley and son Jay, and five grandchildren

Memoir: The book contained a foreword by Michael J. Fox for whom Linda Williams worked as a fundraiser for Parkinson's research. Linda was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia in 2005 at the age of 62

  

 

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