Rebecca Gayheart and Eric Dane at the 2015 AFI Life Achievement Award Gala honoring Steve Martin. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for AFI Rebecca Gayheart is opening up about Eric Dane‘s final days timed to the release of the Grey’s Anatomy star’s posthumous memoir, My Book of Days.
Dane died in February, less than a year after announcing his ALS diagnosis.
The actress, who married Dane in 2004 before embarking upon a divorce in 2018 and having that dismissed in 2025, said it didn’t initially dawn on her that the Euphoria actor’s last trip to the hospital would mark the beginning of the end.
“He had gone to the hospital so many times before, and they would patch him up, so to speak, and he would come home,” Gayheart said in an interview with Maria Shriver, portions of which aired on Tuesday’s episode of NBC’s Today, with additional material posting on Today.com. “And he’d be OK. And we’d go back to the normal routine, which did change week by week.”
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And that’s how she initially approached his last hospital trip.
“I said, ‘Listen, I’ll be back. I have a dinner. I’m going to this event.’ I had no idea that that was it, that that week was going to be our last week,” Gayheart said. “And nor did my daughters. It really took a few days for us to understand the gravity of what that last trip to the hospital meant.”
But after a few days at the hospital, things started to turn serious.
“I think it was like day three in the hospital where it shifted,” Gayheart said. “Everything shifted. Just the tone of when the doctors were talking to us, and some of the information we were given.”
Though Dane knew he was dying, Gayheart was surprised by how fast it happened.
“A lot of people will say, ‘Well, at least you knew, and you could have those last conversations,’” she said. “But we didn’t know, because there is no road map. No one can tell you what the journey looks like because it’s so different for every patient.
“He was becoming more alive mentally, but losing all of his physical abilities. And for the girls, that was really hard to watch as well. But overall, it’s a blur, because it was just so overwhelming.”
Still, the family went ahead with their sleepovers in Dane’s hospital room.
“The girls and I just camped out there with him, and we had our family sleepovers,” she said. “And we brought in those little candles that aren’t real candles. They have batteries. And we played his favorite music, and we tried to make it as nice as you can be in the hospital room.”
Watch more of Gayheart’s interview with Shriver in the videos below.
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