Susan Lucci revealed he “felt like half a person” after 2022 death of her husband, Helmut Huberin the new book Lucci.
“I thought I had lost my light. There are no words to say how much I missed him. And with that came a feeling of complete hopelessness,” Lucci, 79, wrote in the memoir, which was published on Tuesday, February 3. “The encouragement to hold on to hope was shared with me so many times, but the only thing I really hoped would happen was Helmut coming to the door.”
Lucci added, “We all want to have light. And when I thought I lost it, well, it was crippling.”
Huber died at the age of 84 in March 2022, a month after suffering a stroke.
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Lucci recalled getting a phone call from Huber, who was “slurring his words.” Huber was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery, which went “extremely well,” Lucci wrote.
“On the first day, we had every hope. On the second day, however, he didn’t respond as much. On the third day, even less,” he recalled. “It was around the third day that doctors induced a coma to help resolve the bleeding that was going on in his brain. Unfortunately, he never came out of it.”
Lucci married Huber in 1969. They have two children, Liza and Andres. Lucci wrote that he was at Huber’s bedside for the entire month before his death.
“As the weeks passed, it had become clear that there was absolutely no hope of Helmut’s recovery,” she wrote. “He fought hard. I know he tried to live. I could see it. But he didn’t make it.”
After Huber was laid to rest, Lucci wrote that she was left with her “thoughts” along with “sadness” and “grieving” over the loss of her husband.
“I couldn’t imagine living without Helmut. I… could… not… imagine…” she wrote. “Sometimes I still wonder, how come I’m living and he’s gone?”
Lucci remembered her husband as someone who “lighted up every room he was in” in the book.
“He touched everyone around him, leaving a lasting glow of love and laughter. After he died, I thought I would never get my light back,” he said. All my children star wrote “But I also knew I had to make a choice and somehow find the courage to put one foot in front of the other. It was better than lying on the floor in a puddle, completely destroyed.”
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Lucci added, “For a while there, that’s exactly how I felt. For a long time, nothing mattered.”
Lucci spoke to Us Weekly exclusively at American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Red Dress Collection Concert on Thursday, January 29, about his two years of experience writing La Lucci, and how the book allowed him to process the grief of losing Huber.
“I didn’t expect it, but it helped me heal,” she said.
Lucci he is out now