Source: Jim Steinfeldt / Getty
Although he always wore a sheepish grin onstage, Eddie Van Halen was “in a lot of emotional pain” in the final years of his life. That’s according to Van Halen’s ex-wife, Valerie Bertinelli. In her new book, Enough Already: Learning To Love The Way I Am Today, she says the late guitarist was a tortured soul who failed to give himself enough credit for his accomplishments.
“I’m hoping that he’s in a place where he’s being able to go over his magical life that he had and not beat himself up so much, and think of all the good things that he did, and not be in pain any longer — physical or emotional,” Bertinelli writes. “Because he was in a lot of emotional pain.” Although Bertinelli and Van Halen were divorced in 2006, she was by his side when he died in October 2020 after a battle with cancer. “‘I love you’ are the last words Ed says to Wolfie and me, and they are the last words we say to him before he stops breathing,” Bertinelli writes in her book.
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