Valerie Bertinelli reveals final words to ex-husband Eddie Van Halen on his deathbed

Valerie Bertinelli says she and Eddie Van Halen shared a tender moment on the guitarist’s deathbed.

“My final words to him when he was taking his last breath in the hospital were, ‘I love you,'” the actress, 65, wrote in her newly released memoir, “Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect.”

Van Halen was hospitalized in 2019 after battling throat cancer for five years. He had also been diagnosed with oral cancer and lost one-third of his tongue during treatment.

He died in 2020 of a stroke at the age of 65.

The couple met in 1980 at a Van Halen concert and married the following year. They later welcomed their son, Wolfgang, in 1991.

The “One Day at a Time” alum filed for divorce in 2005 after four years of separation. They were officially divorced in 2007.

Van Halen’s alcoholism was a major factor in their split.

“I had a front row seat to Ed’s behavior when he was drunk,” she wrote, “when he was drunk, the way he didn’t know how to handle his traumas or even look at them, the pressure he put on himself, the shame he felt afterward.”

The former Food Network star said that they shared a “flawed love, but it was real.”

“Even when we were angry, we stayed loving. It changed, evolved, and grew back different but stronger than it had been at the beginning of our relationship. It healed us.”

Bertinelli shared that in Van Halen’s last months, he began making amends, “talking to all the people in his life. He was cold-calling them. It was sweet and that was Ed at the core, sweet.”

Heartbreakingly, Bertinelli revealed that when she would leave the “Jump” musician’s hospital room, “he would look around and say, ‘The biggest mistake of my life was letting her go.’ In our own way, we never did let go.”

Van Halen married Janie Liszewski in 2009, and Bertinelli attended their wedding.

The “Hot in Cleveland” star married financial planner Tom Vitale in 2011 and split ten years later.

Bertinelli wrote that the dissolution of her second marriage left her angry — “angry at him, angry at the legal system and angrier at myself.”