For Amy Yasbeck, no closure has followed the loss of her husband, John Ritter, in 2003.
“I remember talking to Craig Ferguson. He asked me on his show after his dad passed away,” the Wings actress said on a recent episode of Steve Kmetko’s Still Here Hollywood podcast. “And that’s the first time I ever thought of it, ever said it. Somebody was talking about closure — I think Dr. Drew or somebody was on — and said something about closure.”
The actress recalled that she had rolled her eyes.
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“What closure?” she thought at the time. “I understand you close a relationship… but, no, it’s a circle. You’re still in that circle, whether you are right at the part where you’re in so much pain you can’t breathe, or you see it, and it’s right there, that pain, that closure; that pain that people want you to have closure on.”
She continued, “You still go through your life, but it affects you, like the moon, like tides. It’s always gonna be there. You don’t know why. Sometimes you have a bad day or something hit you, and you don’t have to, for many people, you don’t have to be in analysis [to ponder that].”
Ritter died unexpectedly on Sept. 11, 2003, after collapsing on the set of his sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, on which he costarred with Katey Sagal and Kaley Cuoco. The star of ’70s sitcom Three’s Company and movies including 1996’s Sling Blade and 2004’sBad Santa had what was thought to be a heart attack but later found to an aortic dissection. The 54-year-old died at the hospital that night.
He and Yasbeck, who met in 1990, while working on the movie Problem Child, married in 1999. Together they had a son, Noah. (Ritter was also the father of three children with his first wife, Nancy Morgan.)
Yasbeck said she has found it helpful to embrace the moments when she wishes Ritter were there with her.
“That’s what John and I used to always talk about: ‘Can I get a witness?'” Yasbeck said. “And we were great witnesses for each other.”
Following Ritter’s death, Yasbeck established the John Ritter Foundation of Aortic Health, which focuses on preventing the unnecessary suffering caused by aortic dissection.