It has been eight years since beloved comedian Bernie Mac passed away, but his widow still breaks down in tears when recalling their final moments together. Bernard ‘Bernie Mac’ McCullough was 50 when he died from pneumonia complications in August 2008, leaving behind his high school sweetheart Rhonda. Just hours before he passed, Rhonda McCullough remembered making one final plea of her husband of more than 30 years – begging him not to die.
‘I remember telling him, I said, “Please don’t, don’t die,” she said in an interview for Oprah’s Where Are They Now on OWN. I said, “I’m here. I’m waiting for you. I’ll take care of you. Just don’t, don’t die. Don’t die.'”
Rhonda said everything began going wrong on the morning of August 8. Bernie, who was best known for The Bernie Mac Show as well as roles in Ocean’s Eleven and Soul Men, had been in the hospital for two weeks. He was hooked up to a ventilator, and needed to have a feeding tube inserted. That’s when his heart stopped beating and the doctors had to resuscitate him.
‘When they finally let me go into the room to see him, I was like “Oh my god,”‘ Rhonda recalled. He was just shaking, and his eyes was just, like, wide open and he wasn’t really looking at anybody.’In the early hours of August 9, Rhonda knew her husband was gone before anyone told her. It was around 2 o’clock that morning. I remember seeing the door open, and the doctor was standing in the doorway,’ Rhonda said.
‘I looked at her and I said, “He’s gone, isn’t he?'” His death shattered Rhonda.’My whole was him since I was 16, and I didn’t know what I was going to do,’ she said. What is my reasoning for being here now, what is my purpose, how am I going to make it now?’
Rhonda would find that purpose in The Bernie Mac Foundation, which her husband started in 2007.The foundation’s aim was to raise awareness for sarcoidosis, a disease involving the growth of collections of inflammatory cells that Bernie was diagnosed with in the 1980s.Although Bernie Mac was in remission at the time of his death, his family said the disease had taken a toll on him as he got older.
‘His lungs became extremely damaged and so did his immune system,’ Rhonda told Rolling Out in 2015.
