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Eric Dane’s forthcoming memoir reveals how the actor first responded to being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The Grey’s Anatomy star died from the neurodegenerative disease in February at age 53. Now, eight months later, the memoir that Dane wrote before his death is being released.
In My Book of Days, Dane recalled a neurologist named Dr. Mark Terrelonge sharing the diagnosis in late 2024 after nine months of searching for answers to issues with his nerves, according to an excerpt obtained by People.
After the appointment with Terrelonge, Dane said that he got in his car and called his estranged wife, Rebecca Gayheart, who is the mother of his two daughters.
“We were married for 14 years, grew apart, filed for divorce, but never got around to signing the papers,” he explained in the memoir. “We’ve since stayed close, co-parenting, going on vacations as a family, spending time together and now we talk every day.”
Dane recalled saying to Gayheart on the phone: “It’s what we feared.”
“I don’t remember a single word I said after that,” he continued. “I remember only feeling a violent impact, like getting the wind knocked out of me, and Rebecca wailing on the other end of the phone, and then I really lose it, and my sobs make my body shudder, and I hear her words pouring out amid her tears, ‘I’m here, we’ll fight this together, I’m not going anywhere.’”
Gayheart, 55, shared her own perspective of the devastating phone call in a conversation with People published Thursday. The former model told the magazine: “I went into my closet and closed the door.” She added that Dane’s revelation was a “punch to the gut” that “took [my] breath away.”
Dane and Gayheart share 16-year-old Billie and 14-year-old Georgia.
In his final, pre-recorded interview, Dane described Gayheart as his “best friend” and “biggest champion.”
“We’re still really best friends, but we’re not together,” he explained to Brad Falchuk in Netflix’s Famous Last Words interview, which aired February 20, the day after his death. “By virtue of the distance of us living in separate homes, there’s a lot of time lost there. But I made sure that I can be there as much as possible and certainly when it counts.”
He said: “Well, we still love each other deeply, I just don’t think we want to live with each other. But there’s a lot of love there.
