Suzanne Somers spent her final moments with her husband Alan Hamel by her side.
The Three’s Company star’s longtime love shared insights into her battle with breast cancer, which she noted in July had returned, and detailed their time together before her passing.
“We were in bed together and her breathing was erratic, and I had been talking to her for hours,” Hamel told NBC News in an interview published on Oct. 16. “There was no response except when I kissed her, she responded, and then around 5 o’clock in the morning, she was gone.”
Somers died at her California home on Oct. 15, just one day shy of her 77th birthday. According to NBC News, the Step-by-Step actress, who first battled breast cancer two decades ago, passed away days after she’d returned home from Chicago, where she’d spent six weeks with specialists.
When she first arrived home, Hamel thought his wife was doing OK.
“She was eating and was, you know, taking her medicine,” he recalled to the outlet, later adding, “All of a sudden she wasn’t responding and she wasn’t eating and she wasn’t taking her meds. As I know her so well, I thought, ‘I wonder if I should call 911?’ And I knew that she wouldn’t want that and that she did not want to go to a hospital.”
Hamel—who noted he’d “talked to her for hours, every night”—is thankful he got to be there with Somers until the very end.
“I wouldn’t say I was surprised,” the producer added in an Oct. 17 Today interview about her passing. “She was breathing heavily at the very end, and I gave her a pill to relax the breathing but it didn’t work. And I was grateful that I was with her when she left us, and it was very peaceful and it was beautiful. And she was beautiful.”
In addition to Hamel, whom she wed in 1977, Somers was surrounded by her son Bruce and immediate family at the time of her passing.
“Her family was gathered to celebrate her 77th birthday on October 16th,” her publicist R. Couri Hay said in a statement obtained by E! News. “Instead, they will celebrate her extraordinary life, and want to thank her millions of fans and followers who loved her dearly.”
And Hamel knows his wife’s legacy will live on—not only through her roles and products but also through her loved ones.
“She was an amazing, amazing woman,” he told Today. “Aside from all of her accomplishments, she was an amazing wife and an amazing mother as well. She’s the one who pulled our family together. I didn’t do it. She did it, and she really knew what she was doing. So, I will miss her.”
