It’s now over a year since Eddie Van Halen passed away in October 2020. This month, one week before what would have been his 57th birthday, his first wife will release a book that touches on her relationship with the legendary guitarist.
Titled Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today, Valerie Bertinelli provided details from it to People magazine. “I loved Ed more than I know how to explain. I loved his soul,” she said. “We were portrayed as a mismatch. The bad boy rock star and America’s sweetheart but privately, Ed wasn’t the person people thought he was and neither was I.”
Bertinelli doesn’t shy away from addressing Van Halen’s problems with substance abuse: “I hated the drugs and alcohol but I never hated him. I saw his pain.”
The couple remained on excellent terms even after their split. Bertinelli remembers the musician speaking with her in private in 2019, when he handed her a bag containing a gold bar.
“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 then. “I just love you.” “He wants me to know he messed up (during our marriage),” Bertinelli notes. “I contributed to our troubles too and I am also sorry.”
Bertinelli also discusses the final moments shared between her, Van Halen, and their son Wolfgang. They were at the hospital daily alongside Eddie’s wife Janie Liszewski and brother Alex.
“‘I love you’ are the last words Ed says to Wolfie and me,” Bertinelli reveals, “and they are the last words we say to him before he stops breathing.”
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Bertinelli and Van Halen married in 1981 with the former giving birth to Wolfgang in 1991. They split up in 2005 and their divorce was finalised two years later.
Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today is set for release on January 18th and is available to pre-order here.
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