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Valerie Bertinelli has been open about grieving her ex-husband Eddie Van Halen's death, and in a new interview with People, she shed even more light on that somber day nearly four years ago.
“I didn’t want to believe it was happening,” the actor recalled. “Even while it was happening, I wasn’t believing it was happening,”
Bertinelli, who was married to the Van Halen guitarist for 20 years, was by his side when he passed, along with their son Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie's brother Alex Van Halen, his two sons, and Eddie's widow Janie Liszewski. “I forget who suggested it, but we were like, ‘Should we have pizza?’ … Because he couldn’t eat, and the last thing Ed really wanted was pizza,” Bertinelli divulged. “He loved pizza and burritos, so we had pizza in his hospital room. I hope people don’t think that’s morbid.”
The couple was together from 1981 until 2001, and finalized their divorce in 2007. Bertinelli said they became close again during Eddie's final years, but not in a romantic way. “I continued for years to rewrite the facts in my head and build them into some sort of fantasy,” she said in the interview “But now I know we were never going to get back together. We were becoming kinder souls to one another. Our bond was the unconditional love we had for our son.”
Wolfgang has shared some emotional tributes to his dad since his passing in fall 2020, most recently commemorating what would've been Eddie's 69th birthday.