Valerie Bertinelli is reflecting on a heartbreaking turning point in her marriage to Eddie Van Halen, opening up about the emotional toll of watching his health decline. In a candid interview with Ted Danson, Bertinelli recalled becoming increasingly frustrated and concerned over Van Halen’s smoking and other coping habits following his cancer diagnosis.
“I was so angry with him,” Bertinelli said on the May 6 episode of SiriusXM’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. “At one point, we were still together, and he had surgery to cut off part of his tongue. And the doctor said, ‘You know this is because you smoke, right?’ And I was like, ‘Ed, God, you better stop smoking.’ Yeah. ‘Just stop smoking. I don’t even care about the alcohol anymore. Just stop smoking.'”
“It was hard. It was hard for him. He used a lot of different tools that were soothing but harmful for his body. A lot of us use different tools in our toolbox for trauma that numb ignore any kind of feelings we don’t wanna feel…” she continued.
Van Halen was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000. Following surgery to remove part of his tongue, he was cancer free by 2002. About a decade later, he was treated for throat cancer and, in 2017, he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. He died three years later—at the age of 65—following a stroke.
“I loved Ed more than I know how to explain,” Bertinelli wrote in her book, Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today, according to People. “I loved his soul.”
Also in her book, Bertinelli shared one of the last conversations she had with Van Halen before he died. “Maybe next time. Maybe next time, we’ll get it right,” she told him.
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