Suzanne Somers' Husband Alan Hamel and Son Bruce Reflect on the Star's Final Moments (Exclusive)

How are you two doing today? How are you doing? Well, I go in and out. I have my family around me and have had since this happened. And they haven't told me this, but I think there was a plan. Make sure he's not alone. And I love that. So I go in and out when I think about what happened. I lose it and then I regain it. And it's probably going to be that way for a while until things settle down. But I lost half of me. We were one. I lost half of me like that. I think yesterday we were in a bubble and it was special to all be together. And today the overwhelming outpouring of love from everyone is heartfelt. But it's a whole additional wave of emotion as well. Yesterday she was just mom and today she's back to being Suzanne Somers in everyone's eyes. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate everything that she's done and the ways she has touched so many people. You know, we started off with thousands of people, then tens of thousands of people, then hundreds of thousands of people. And it's amazing all over the world. People aren't just writing in. I feel badly for you. My condolences. They poured out their hearts. She had touched them one way or another. She fought and fought and fought and used every possible kind of health care, whatever was right. And it looked like she was going to make it. And then it just overwhelmed her. And I was with her in bed, five o'clock in the morning, Sunday. And so it was peaceful. And I was glad that our whole family could come and see her. And it was a beautiful experience. What was the final exchange between the two of you? She wasn't talking at the end. The last couple of days she stopped eating. She stopped talking, wouldn't take her medicine. And we didn't know if she was alive or not. I kept taking her blood pressure, but she wouldn't respond. She was not responsive in any way. And then when I kissed her, she responded, kissing me back. And I knew that she heard what I was saying. I had talked to her for hours, well into the night, hoping that she could hear me. And I think she did hear me. We knew this day would come, but we thought it would be me, because I'm 10 years older than Suzanne. And then I thought, what a conundrum. If it's me first, then she's alone. I don't want her to be alone. How would you describe the relationship? They were inseparable. And I joked that they were functionally codependent, and with a small f on functionally, because there's not many people, you know, people say, oh, I could never spend that much time with my mate. And they never got tired of each other. They were like this. Alan is very private, doesn't want to be a public person. My mother loved being in the public, and so he protected her. You know, my mother had an amazing talent for being 100% present with whomever she was with. And that wasn't just a public persona. She was 100% a wife, 100% a grandmother, 100% a sister, 100% a mother. Bruce, you got to see that relationship between your mother and Alan from a different angle. What did Alan mean to her? It wasn't always so rosy. It was for me. But the reality is, is everything takes hard work. And these two started, and it was because they were very different people. There was friction there that they would work through, and sometimes it was tumultuous. But what's ironic is that for two people who everyone thought wouldn't work at the beginning, they're who we... I've been married for 32 years. They're who we model our relationship after. We make sure we don't go to bed angry with each other. We make sure that we speak from our heart and speak the truth. Part of a great love is showing up, and these two showed up for each other 100% every day. I want to ask you about the poem you wrote to Suzanne. It was beautiful. Tell me about writing that. I've sent her a lot of love letters. It didn't have to be a birthday or an anniversary. It was just, I'd feel something, and I would want to memorialize the moment. And I'd send it to her, and that's what that really was. It happened to coincide with her birthday. She would have been 77. But I could never find a feeling that was deep enough to really describe what our relationship was. And I'm not exaggerating. The longer we were together, the deeper the relationship, and in every respect. And that was a big one. Respect was a big one. And she also was not only the matron of the family. She's the one who actually carved out this family. Because when we got together, I came with two kids, and she came with Bruce. And putting those two families together is brutal and really works really well. Ours worked really well. We are all one. We talked to Tony, our Dancing with the Stars partner. And Alan, here's what he said. Tony said that you and Suzanne were the poster children of love. Wow. Wow, thank you. I'll take that one. In life, you never know what's going to happen. Suzanne and I didn't plan any of this, OK? We weren't wise enough, old enough, didn't have enough wisdom to plan anything. This just evolved. We didn't plan on being together constantly for 42 of our 55 years. We didn't plan that at all. It just evolved. We wanted to be together. She said to me one day, you know, when you're in another room in the house, I miss you. And I said, I feel the same way. And I know that to a lot of people, that sounds really weird. And it is weird. But it worked for us. She was my everything. I want to ask you, Bruce, about being the son of Suzanne Somers. What was that like? I had 11 years where it was the two of us, you know, sort of us against the world. And then we moved down to Los Angeles. And she was really going to make this thing called acting, give it a go. And shortly thereafter, she landed in Three's Company. And we started Blending Families. I think that, of course, there was some getting used to it. I wouldn't do it any other way to have lived and grown, raised very sort of humbly, and then have a lot of privilege. It gave me a lot of gratitude. But more importantly, there was her. In fact, when we would be in Las Vegas, and we'd be talking, and she'd be getting ready to go do a show, it'd be 10 minutes before the show. And she'd look at me and said, I have to go be her now. And it's a different persona. It wasn't a fake persona. It was just another aspect of her. We all knew. And we all enjoyed it. I mean, she provided an incredible ride for all of us. Everyone, obviously Alan, everyone knows about their relationship. But myself and we're a blended family. So I called my stepbrother and stepsister, my brother and sister. All of us always felt loved. Bruce, your mother had such energy. When did things change for her? And how was it? It was actually pretty rapid. Because in the last three years, when she, even when she broke her neck, she fell down the stairs and broke her neck. She's just hearty Irish stock. And it was about six weeks before she actually went to the hospital. And she was just finally in excruciating pain. But that's just a sort of keyhole into her spirit. And during the last year or so, when she was in pain, I'd ask her, are you in pain? And she said, so much it's not even worth talking about it. And that's her strength, just to push it out. And somewhere in the middle of that, at every holiday, she was present. And we were having these beautiful exchanges. And she even managed to cook her incredible meals and Thanksgiving and all of those wonderful experiences. How will you keep Suzanne with you each and every day? I don't know. I have talked to her for hours and hours and hours since she wasn't responding, hoping, knowing she could hear me. If there's a way for Suzanne to signal me that she's around me, I would welcome that. And I don't know how I'm going to keep Suzanne with me. But I know she's going to be with me forever. And I took her wedding ring off before she was taken away from the house. And I will wear it around my neck on a chain for the rest of my life. It's a special ring because we didn't buy it. My dad in Toronto went shopping one day. And he reached in the potato bin at the supermarket and pulls out this ring. And the manager, he turned it into the manager of the store. And the manager said, if no one claims it, he said, it's yours. So my dad went back a week later. Nobody claimed it. He sent it to us and said, maybe this is your wedding ring. Guess what? It fit perfectly. And on the inside of the ring is the initial S. Bruce, how will you remember your mom? And how will she stay with you? I already feel that she's around. I feel tapped into her energy. And it comes through me. And my mother used to always say, always speak from your heart, because that's the voice of God. And that's as true and honest and sort of what I can do to honor her always is to speak from my heart. She's always with me. And I feel her all around. It's not something, when you know, you know. It's not something you can explain. But you feel it. This is the cake that we had made for my mother. Suzanne loved cake. Loved cake. We would go to weddings. And we'd get there. And I'd say, how well do you know these people? Because I'd never heard of them. She said, I've only met them once, actually. She was there for the cake. I'm not kidding. It's true. I'm not kidding. We went to a friend's wedding. And there must have been 150 people there. They had a gigantic cake. And she accidentally cut her foot on something. We decided to go home. So on the way out, we walked by the cake. So she looked around to make sure no one was looking, went behind the cake, and did this. Yeah. It's kind of a secret. People don't know. My mother had a healthy appetite. And when I was a kid, when you're a teenage boy, you eat a lot. My mother would always out eat me until her nickname was Mr. Ed, like the horse. If there is one thing that you could say to her, what would it be? I would tell her how much, how in love I am with her, and how she makes me feel. And I guess feelings, but how do you describe your feelings? I think feelings is really what it's all about, because there's no way to describe what your feelings are if they're really entrenched, really deep, deep feelings, which mine are, which hers was as well. So all you can do is demonstrate how you feel about somebody. And it wasn't always great. We had some tough times, OK? And then until one day, we were saying terrible things to each other, and we're talking about breaking up. And in her wisdom, she said, let's just cool this for a moment. She said, let's surrender to one another. And I'll do what you want me to do, and you'll do what I want you to do. And we'll respect each other, and we'll stop with the bickering and the name-calling. And that was really the beginning. Wisdom, and that was years ago. It's great wisdom, and we appreciate you talking to us. I know it was a hard day. Bruce, thank you for being here.