Valerie Bertinelli and her son paid tribute to the late Eddie Van Halen on what would have been his 67th birthday on Wednesday.
The actress, 61, and Wolfgang, 30, each posted in honor of Eddie, who passed away in 2020 at age 65. Bertinelli opted for a throwback photo of her ex-husband wearing nothing but shorts, and sporting wet hair and a smirk on his face. She simply captioned the photo with a white heart emoji.
Wolfgang decided to share a photograph dating back to 1995, showing him and his dad sitting on ann outdoor stairwell. Eddie is rocking frosted tips and a goatee, a white long-sleeved shirt and jeans, while little Wolfgang has on a plaid vest over a white-button up.
“Happy Birthday, Pop. I love and miss you more than you could ever know,” Wolfgang tweeted.
Eddie died after a battle with cancer. “I can’t believe I’m having to write this, but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning,” his son confirmed on Twitter in October 2020. “He was the best father I could ever ask for. Every moment I’ve shared with him on stage and off stage was a gift,” Wolf continued. “My heart is broken and I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from this loss.”
Bertinelli has since spoken out numerous times to praise her ex-husband, and has since shared her story in a new memoir titled “Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I am Today,” which was released on Jan. 18.
The Food Network star recently told Yahoo Entertainment’s “Under the Covers” celebrity book series that she was by the guitarist’s side every day at the hospital with their son Wolfgang.
“Some of the last words I said to him [are], you know, ‘Maybe next time. Maybe we’ll get it right next time,'” said Bertinelli. “And I really do believe that this is not the first time nor will it be the last time that I spend a lifetime with him.”
The pair were married from 1981 until 2007. While the exes remarried to other spouses in the later years, their bond endured. And it was their loving relationship that Eddie relied on as he faced his biggest battle.
According to an excerpt previously published by People magazine, it was Thanksgiving Day 2019 when Van Halen stopped by Bertinelli’s home and asked to speak with her privately. After they found a quiet spot in a friend’s car, he gave her a small bag, which had a pendant-size gold bar. He purchased it while getting cancer treatments in Germany.
“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,” he told her with tears in his eyes. “I just love you.”
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Musician Eddie Van Halen and ex-wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli.
((Photo by Ann Clifford/DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images) )
Bertinelli wrote that it was Van Halen’s way to show her how sorry he was for everything.
Speaking to Hoda Kotb on the day her book was released, an emotional Bertinelli explained that she didn’t set out to write about her grief. However, once she started putting pen to paper, she realized how vital it was to her life’s story.
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“When I wrote it and when I did it, it was very cathartic to go through it. I didn’t intend to write a book that had all the grief in it. It was about joy,” she explained. “But if I left that part out, it wouldn’t show you the path to joy and how to find that even through the depths of the biggest grief you can feel.”
