Valerie Bertinelli Reveals Ex-Husband Eddie Van Halen’s Last Words: ‘Maybe Next Time We’ll Get It Right’
Actor Valerie Bertinelli is still mourning the death of musician Eddie Van Halen, like the rest of his fans. Even though she and the Van Halen guitarist divorced in 2007, Bertinelli was there for her ex-husband in his last moments. She spoke about his final words and their final moments together in her upcoming book, Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today.
Valerie Bertinelli has revealed Eddie Van Halen’s last words
In her new book, Bertinelli talked about her ex-husband’s last days and moments. She wrote that loved ones surrounded Van Halen in his final moments. Among the people there were the ex-couple’s son Wolfgang, Van Halen’s wife Janie Liszewski, whom he married in 2009, and his brother Alex.
Van Halen spoke his last words to Bertinelli and Wolfgang during these final moments. “‘I love you’ are the last words Ed says to Wolfie and me, and they are the last words we say to him before he stops breathing,” Bertinelli wrote in an excerpt obtained by People.
“Maybe next time. Maybe next time we’ll get it right,” Bertinelli told Van Halen in those last couple of months.
Bertinelli calls Van Halen her ‘soulmate’
Even though their 20-year marriage was tumultuous, Bertinelli wrote that Van Halen was her “soulmate.”
“We were portrayed as a mismatch,” Bertinelli wrote. “The bad boy rock star and America’s sweetheart but privately, Ed wasn’t the person people thought he was and neither was I.”
One of the biggest reasons for the couple’s 2007 divorce was Van Halen’s drug addiction. “I hated the drugs and the alcohol but I never hated him,” she continued to write. “I saw his pain.”
After they finalized their divorce and each of them remarried, they remained close, especially for their son. They had a bond, which grew exponentially once Van Halen learned of his cancer.
The guitarist gave the actor a gift during his cancer treatments
Bertinelli wrote that on Thanksgiving Day in 2019, Van Halen visited her and requested to talk to her privately. In privacy, Van Halen gave her “a small bag with a pendant-sized gold bar that he bought while getting cancer treatments in Germany,” People wrote.
“I hope you don’t think it’s weird, you know, that I bought my ex-wife this gift and didn’t get my wife anything,” Van Halen told her with tears in his eyes. “I just love you.”
“He wants me to know he messed up [during our marriage],” Bertinelli wrote. “I contributed to our troubles too and I am also sorry.”
Bertinelli regrets not spending more time with her ex-husband during his last months. Her marriage to Tom Vitale and Van Halen’s to Liszewski were both struggling. “There is no chance we are going to get back together,” she wrote, “but I do know if one of us were to open up, the other one would too, and I don’t want to get into that.
“I can’t explain the feelings Ed and I had for each other,” she continued. “Who really knows had he not died. I doubt it. I loved him more than I know how to explain and there’s nothing sexual about it. It was more than that. And Ed and I understood that.”
“There is no greater love than what we had between the two of us and with that, we made this beautiful son,” she wrote.
Hopefully, Bertinelli found comfort in writing about her relationship with Van Halen. Her new book certainly gives fans the answers they’ve been looking for.
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