Alicia Witt has spoken out for the first time since her parents died.
The Walking Dead star's mother and father, Robert, 87, and Diane, 75, were found in their home last year, having reportedly died from hypothermia.
Neighbours said at the time that the pair were rarely seen outside and that their Massachusetts home had become run-down.
In a Facebook post, Witt has now spoken of her grief, revealing that her parents had not let her inside their home for over a decade.
The 45-year-old wrote: "It still doesn’t feel real.
"It’s been a month since I got scared, not having heard back from them, and called to have them checked on. Waiting, phone in hand, praying fervently that the next call would be from them, angry I’d gotten someone else involved.
"Knowing as soon as I heard the detective’s voice on the other line that they were gone. Knowing I would never hear their voices again. Beginning the rest of my life of finding them on the breeze, in a song, in a dream. "
Witt explained that she tried to help her parents but they wouldn't let her.
She went on: "I hadn’t been allowed inside my parents’ home for well over a decade; every time I offered to have something repaired for them, they refused to allow workers into their house.
"I begged, cried, tried to reason with them, tried to convince them to let me help them move - but every time, they became furious with me, telling me i had no right to tell them how to live their lives and that they had it all under control."
Adding: "It was not for a lack of trying on my part, or the part of other people who loved them."
Witt said that her heart was 'broken' by the news of their passing and she couldn't have imagined that it could have come to this.
The actor wrote: "My parents were not penniless. They were fiercely stubborn, beautifully original souls, and with that, they made choices - choices that I couldn’t talk them out of.
"I did help them, in all the ways I could - in all the ways they would let me.
"I had no idea that their heat had gone out. I will never understand how or why they made the choice not to tell me this, not to let me help them with this.
"My heart is broken."
She finished her post: And even if I could have had a crystal ball and looked into the future- if I could have said to them ‘you are going to break my heart and the hearts of all who love you with a worst-case-scenario ending if you don’t let us help you’ - I still think they would have made the same choices. they weren’t willing to make different ones.
"Our last words to each other were 'I love you'. That part was simple; never in doubt. they loved me so. I loved them so."
Topics: The Walking Dead, US News
Dominic Smithers