Coping With The Loss of a Loved One
- “Food Network” star Valerie Bertinelli, 65, has admitted that her ex husband, Eddie Van Halen, who died in 2021, remains a “huge part” of her life—and recently recalled a moment when a flock of birds made her feel his presence.
- While working through grief and vulnerable tackling of the emotions that accompany it, some find tools like therapy to be helpful. For others, support groups or turning to faith may be helpful.
- Whichever methods of support you look for after loss, you should know that there is no correct way to grieve. There is no perfect timeline for grieving, either.
- The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says if you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Just call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.
Bertinelli recently addressed her strong love for Van Halen in a recent episode of The Bossticks show, hosted by Lauryn and Michael Bosstick.
Read More“Because first of all, I love him dearly. And this is to not say anything against his second wife or my second husband. I just love the father of my son that I knew since I was 20. I knew that we would never be intimate again, even had he lived, but he would always be one of my dearest friends, ’cause he’s just — he was Ed. He was just a huge part of my life… And I would much rather feel this way about Wolfie’s father than I would hating him,” she explained.
However, in an interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show in 2022, Bertinelli revealed she still feels the presence of her late ex, thanks to a flock of birds.
“There was something recently that just happened to me, after I finished the book [her memoir “Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today] … and I have kind of, like, made this pact with Ed that I would see this certain bird. Or was it two? Or was it three? I wasn’t sure whether it was two or three birds. And then I would know he was there,” she explained.
“And so I was in the bathroom early in the morning … I had this big picture window and I said, ‘Oh, there’s three birds. Ed, are you here?’ I said, ‘Oh, wait, was it two birds I said? Was it two or three? So, I don’t know if it’s you, Ed, if you’re here or not … You know what? Screw it. If you’re here, just send a whole flock of birds.”
Then, before she could even finish getting her words out about the flock of birds, she said a “whole flock of birds” suddenly flew by.
“It must have been 20 or 30 birds, these tiny little birds. And you know, they do those waves, you see them? That’s what happened … went by. Never saw the birds again,” she added.
Bertinelli expressed how that moment left her with goosebumps, ultimately confirming to her that Van Halen was present.
“It made me happy,” Bertinelli admitted.
As for how Bertinelli copes with Van Halen not being around, she admits the “grief” hasn’t left her.
“I know that I get to celebrate my son and watch him onstage, but there’s a big hole there as I want to be next to his dad,” Bertinelli said on the Drew Barrymore show last year.
“And I want to be celebrating it with him, but I can’t. So you feel that grief, but you still feel the celebration.”
“It’s leaning into the grief. Sadness is not a bad thing, but a thing that exists. It’s love,” she added.
Life After Losing Eddie Van Halen
Bertinelli has come a long way since experiencing the tragic lost her first husband legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen in October 2020 after multiple battles with various forms of cancer.
The two were married from 1981 to 2007 and share a son named Wolfgang. Despite their separation, Bertinelli considered Van Halen to be a “soulmate.”
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“I just don’t feel like I’ve ever been loved like that, in that way, from anybody else,” she’s said in an earlier interview. “I just feel a connection with Ed that I’ve never really felt with anyone else.”
Van Halen’s first diagnosis tongue cancer came in the year 2000 when his son, Wolfgang, was just 9 years old. For treatment, he had part of his tongue removed, but he was declared to have entered remission in 2002.
Then around 2014, he was diagnosed with throat cancer after cancerous cells traveled there from his tongue. In 2017, cancer struck again when Eddie Van Halen was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
Then came a brain tumor in 2019. He received treatment for his lung cancer in Germany to extend his expected survival time and reportedly had gamma knife radiation, a type of a radiosurgery, to remove his brain tumor.
Van Halen struggled with his health for many years. SurvivorNet obtained a copy of the death certificate issued two months after his passing which revealed that he was suffering from both lung and skin cancer. The document lists his cause of death as a cerebrovascular accident (stroke), but underlying conditions included pneumonia, lung cancer, myelodysplastic syndrome and squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.
Myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder which causes a disruption in blood cell production, often occurs in response to cancer treatments. He had been suffering from this disorder for the last six months of his life.
One important thing to note is that while we do not necessarily know why each of his cancers developed, we do know that years of heavy drinking, drug use and chain-smoking might have increased his risk for cancer. And despite Van Halen’s claims that his throat cancer was caused by putting copper and brass guitar picks in his mouth for years, there is no sufficient evidence to back up these claims.
Using Faith as a Tool for Healing
A study published in Cancer highlights the powerful role of faith in the lives of cancer patients, revealing that 69% of those diagnosed with cancer reported praying for their health, compared to 45% of the general U.S. population.
Cancer psychologist Dr. Andrew Kneier helped co-author “Coping with Cancer: Ten Steps toward Emotional Well-Being.” He also co-authored a column published by Stanford Medicine with Rabbi Jeffery M. Silberman, director of spiritual care at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.
Together, they emphasize the deep emotional and psychological support that faith provides to those battling illness.
According to Kneier and Silberman, spirituality offers a powerful coping mechanism, helping individuals navigate the uncertainty that comes with a cancer diagnosis.
“A person’s faith or spirituality provides a means for coping with illness and reaching a deeper kind of inner healing,” they explain.
Faith helps patients in multiple ways, including:
- Seeking answers to the difficult questions illness presents.
- Finding comfort in the midst of fear and pain.
- Gaining a sense of direction during an overwhelming and uncertain time.
Religious teachings, they argue, can serve as a guidepost, offering strength and resilience when navigating the emotional and physical challenges of cancer.
WATCH: Three-time cancer survivor shares how her faith helped her during cancer.
New York City Presbyterian Pastor Tom Evans tells SurvivorNet about the importance of finding ways to cope with the complex web of feelings you may be experiencing after a challenging health diagnosis, such as cancer.
“It’s important to reach out in a simple prayer to God, even if you’ve never prayed before, you don’t know what to say, a heartfelt plea, ‘God, help me, be with me,’” Pastor Evans told SurvivorNet.
“You can reach out to God, and you can reach out to people, your friends and family, and say, ‘I can’t do this on my own. I need you.’ “It’s in that willingness to be open and to receive that we can find something deeper that we never would’ve encountered without this hardship,” Evans continued.
“A Sacred and Blessed Calling”: Managing Life As a Caregiver
Tips For Starting Over After a Life-Changing Event
Starting over after a life-changing event, like losing a loved one to suicide, is certainly arduous, but it can be done. Here’s how:
- Examine your thoughts. Take time to reflect on the tragedy or difficulty you are facing. Dr. Scott Irwin tells SurvivorNet that, often, people with cancer and chronic disease are “grieving the change in their life, the future they had imagined is now different.”
- Seek help. Dr. Irwin, who directs Supportive Care Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, adds that talk therapy can help people significantly: “It’s about meeting the individual patient where they are and their feelings, how they’ve always dealt with their body image, what the body image changes mean now in their lives and their relationships, and how they can move forward given the new reality.
- Realize that you are not the first. Study the lives of other people who have faced similar difficulties. Dr. Samantha Boardman tells SurvivorNet, “Having support we know is really critical in the healing process.” She adds there is also a benefit in “talking to those who’ve, you know, been through this process, who are maybe a couple of steps ahead of you, who can tell you what it’s like to walk in their shoes and the unbelievable wisdom that one can gain from speaking to them.”
- Visualize the future. Imagine what it will look like for you to start over. Many people find it very helpful to create a vision board. Cut out pictures or quotes or mementos that give you a concrete picture of your future. Look to it when you are feeling down or in need of a lift. The good news? It works.
Life After Loss
It’s normal to feel sad about changes in your life that might be brought on by death or a cancer diagnosis.
“Grief comes in waves,” says Dr. Scott Irwin, a psychiatrist and Director of Supportive Care Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “They’re grieving the change in their life, the future they had imagined is now different.”
Some days can be tougher than others, but Dr. Irwin says talk therapy is helpful so it’s important to reach out to your doctor, to a therapist or to support groups in your community.
SurvivorNet also spoke with Megan Newcomer, who lost a close friend to metastatic cancer in 2018. She shared her unique way of coping with grief. Her friend was an athlete and soccer player, so to help her cope, she embarked on a marathon race in his honor.
Newcomer advises others grieving to first “acknowledge your feelings.”
“Then, think about a way that you could honor the person through a mechanism that is meaningful to you. So that can be artwork, music, or developing a financial fundraising project. It could be something very simple, but I do think having it be intentional is what you’re doing to help honor this person,” Newcomer adds.
In a column for SurvivorNet, New York-based clinical psychologist Dr. Marianna Strongin wrote that it may be helpful to remind yourself that these feelings are “meaningful yet temporary.”
“If you approach them with compassion, kindness, and eventually acceptance, you will come away from this period in your life more connected to your resilience and strength,” she wrote.
Finding a Therapist That’s Right For You
How to Cope With Complex & Changing Emotions
When a stressful life event occurs, people may react with a range of different (and quickly changing) emotions. This is completely normal.
“The way people respond is very variable,” Psychiatrist Dr. Lori Plutchik tells SurvivorNet. “Very much consistent with how they respond to stresses and challenges in their life in general.”
In this video, Dr. Plutchik is speaking mostly about how people react after a cancer diagnosis which can be a huge range of emotions from fear to anger to determination
Handling Stressful Life Events
However, the conclusion remains the same no matter what stressor someone may be dealing with: your emotions are valid and seeking mental health help may look different for every person.
“People have a range of emotions when they’re diagnosed with cancer,” Dr. Plutchik explains. “And they can include fear, anger … and these emotions tend to be fluid. They can recede and return based on where someone is in the process. Going through a cancer diagnosis is just the beginning of a complicated, complicated process.”
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Dr. Plutchik explains that the patient, or person going through the stressful event, should accept that emotions will be fluid. You may feel fine one day and then feel a massive wave of stress the next. It’s also important for those you look to for support whether that’s a therapist, friends and family, or both to understand the fluidity of stress-related emotions.
If a stressful event is affecting how you think and feel, it may be time to seek some sort of mental health treatment. This could mean traditional talk therapy, medication, changing lifestyle habits (like exercise and diet), seeking out a support group, or many other approaches.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor
- What can I do if my emotions begin to feel overwhelming?
- Are there approaches that don’t involve traditional therapy?
- Should I consider medication such as antidepressants?
- What are the potential side effects should I decide to begin medication?
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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