Rebecca Gayheart has opened up about the final days of her husband Eric Dane’s life, from family sleepovers in his bedroom to having “no idea what it was like” during his final trip to the hospital.
Dane died at age 53 in February, less than a year after publicly announcing he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Gayheart, 55, spoke with NBC special correspondent Maria Shriver on “TODAY” Tuesday, the release day of Dane’s posthumous memoir, “My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments.” The actor explained how she and their two daughters “never anticipated” they would lose him in February.
“He had been to the hospital many times before, and they would patch him up, so to speak, and he would come home,” Gayheart said. “And everything would be fine with him. And we would go back to the normal routine, which changed from week to week.”
She remembers the first day of Dane’s last trip to the hospital.
“I said, ‘Look, I’ll be back. I have a dinner. I’m going to this event.’ I didn’t know that this was it, that this week was going to be our last week,” Gayheart said. “And neither did my girls. It really took us a few days to understand the gravity of what that last trip to the hospital meant.”
Gayheart and Dane married in 2004 and filed for divorce in 2018. Gayheart filed to have the divorce annulled in 2025. They co-parent their daughters and she was at his bedside during his last week.
The actor and model and their daughters, Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14, began to realize the severity of the situation after a few days.
“I think it was like the third day in the hospital where it changed,” Gayheart said. “Everything changed. Just the tone in which the doctors spoke to us and some of the information we were given.”
Dane also acknowledged how serious things were getting.
“He was fully aware that it was changing and he was always communicating with us,” Gayheart said. “Not verbally well, but I could understand him most of the time. The kids could most of the time, his closest friends.”
Doctor friends of the couple helped Gayheart through this emotional period, during which she said she suffered from “decision fatigue.” She said Dane knew he was dying.
“We figured it out as we went along,” she said. “But I remember the moment when Eric decided to make choices, and he did. … He was in control of how he was going to leave.”
To comfort the “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Euphoria” actor in his final days, Gayheart and their daughters hosted their usual family sleepover in Dane’s hospital room.
“The girls and I just camped there with him and had family sleepovers,” she said. “And we brought these little candles that aren’t real candles. They have batteries. And we played her favorite music, and we tried to make it as pleasant as possible in the hospital room.”
Gayheart was not prepared for how quickly the end was coming.
“A lot of people will say, ‘Well, at least you knew that and you could have those last conversations,'” she said. “But we didn’t know that, because there is no road map. No one can tell you what the journey is like because it is very different for each patient.
“He was becoming more alive mentally, but losing all his physical abilities. And for the girls, it was also very difficult to watch. But overall it’s a blur, because it was so upsetting.”
During the wide-ranging conversation, Gayheart also spoke to Shriver about Dane’s posthumous book, her decision to go public with her ALS diagnosis, her struggles with becoming a caregiver, the moment she found out he had ALS, and how their daughters are doing in the wake of his death.
“He became a different person in a way,” Gayheart said. “He suddenly really valued his life, and every minute of how he was going to spend his life and what he was going to do with his days.”
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