Shari Belafonte recently opened up about the final moments her iconic father, Harry Belafonte, shared with her before his death.
The prolific singer, actor, and civil rights advocate passed away last year due to congestive heart failure. Shari disclosed that during their final meeting, he was in good spirits, laughing warmly.
“I know exactly what I said to him,” Shari, aged 69, told People. The Morning Show actress remembers seeing Harry, who was 96 at the time of his passing, comfortably seated in his wheelchair with his wife, Pamela Frank, beside him.
“He said, ‘Pam.’ She said, ‘What up, babe?’ He said, ‘Sit me upright.’ So she went over to start sitting him up. And he has a caregiver, so the caregiver said, ‘I’ll get it, Mr. B.’ ”
“So they kept trying to prop him up. He kept going, ‘Higher, higher, higher,’ to the point where he was all the way up. He was bent over. And he said, ‘Higher.’ I said, ‘Harry, if you were any higher, you’d be sucking on your own,’ ” Shari told the outlet. “And he went, ‘What did you say?’ And we started laughing, and that was it.”
“Then I said, ‘I love you, Dad.’ And then I left and that was the last conversation we had,” Shari recalled.
At 96, Harry Belafonte’s Daughter Said He Had No Regrets
Shari strongly believes her famous father never looked back.
“I think he lived his life to the bitter end. He was 96 years old. He didn’t have any regrets,” she added of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. “So I think that’s a lesson to take for most people, is to be true to yourself and go out kicking and screaming, or happy. And do what’s honest for you.”
Shari Belafonte detailed that her relationship with her father grew stronger much later in his life. She recalled calling him by his first name far more often than “Dad”.
“He was not the warm and fuzzy father figure depicted in early TV shows,” Shari admitted of her iconic father. “But then, who really was? My parents separated when my mother was pregnant with me, so I did not grow up with him in our household. My grandmother and mother raised me, and they would be talking about ‘Harry’ — ‘Harry’s coming over to pick up Shari at whatever time.’ So 90% of the time, I refer to him as ‘Harry,’ ” she recalled. “A few times over the years, he’s gone, ‘Why don’t you call me ‘Dad’?’ I say, ‘Well, okay, I’ll make more of an effort to do that!’ “