An uneventful end to an eventful life: Alex Van Halen opens up about grieving his brother Eddie's death

Music plays an important part in all our lives. It doesn't matter who you are, what your ethnic background, what your race, what your gender, what your religion, what your beliefs – everyone loves some form of music.

Even my mother, who was always too busy doing things around the house and didn't have the patience to sit down and enjoy any form of entertainment, loved music. Growing up, I fondly remember the only time she would put aside her housework for an hour was to sit down in front of the TV on Saturday nights at 8 o'clock.

"OK, Tony, time to change the channel."

She loved the Lawrence Welk Show. It was the only show she watched. She loved the wholesome manner the crooners would sing their songs on the show, despite not knowing what they were singing. Her favorite part of the show was when the accordion player would play. Usually, there was a certain band member wearign a light blue suit who would play the instrument, but on rare occasions Lawrence Welk, the king of Polka himself, would crack his knuckles and play the instrument that garnered him worldwide popularity.

I can hear Lawrence Welk in my head right now in his deep Polish accent, waving his little wand, counting down, "And, uh, one, and, uh, two, and, uh, three." I am smiling as I think about it now.

That is the kind of feeling and thoughts music emotes. Music brings people together.

There is a genre of music for every mood. I have playlists on my phone for when I work out, when I just go for a walk, when I just want to mellow out, or when I am pissed off. I even have a playlist for when I want to feel closer and reminisce about my mother who passed away in 2021.

My favorite genre is classic rock. I love me some Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Motley Crue, Heart. My favorite band ever, though, is Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen, to me, is the greatest guitarist who has ever graced this planet – not named Jimi Hendrix.

I was devastated in the fall of 2020 when one day I came home from work to find out that Eddie had passed away. I remember how I found out very well because I have never let my life partner, Erin, live it down.

We live on the second floor of my family's two family house. I had just gotten home from a long, stressful, tiring day of work. Anyone who has worked in the restaurant business can relate. I couldn't wait to just crash on my couch.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor of my house and was greeted by Erin at the door. She was holding a Van Halen T-shirt of mine, stretched out in front of her, and she was pouting.

This is peculiar. She rarely meets me at the door when I got home. And why is she holding my Van Halen T-shirt in front of her? And why is she sad?

I knew Eddie had been battling cancer for a long time. I think I remember at one point he had to have a portion of his tongue cut off. He was an extremely heavy smoker all his life. Every interview I can remember, he always had a lit cigarette in his hand. He was famous for having an attachment on the end of his guitar which would hold his lit cigarette while he was playing on stage at concerts. You'd see him playing and there would be a little wisp of smoke coming from the end of the guitar.

So I knew he was sick, but I hadn't heard any updates in a while. I was still holding out hope for a reunion tour with either or both of Van Halen's most well-known lead singers, David Lee Roth and/or Sammy Hagar.

But when I got to the top of those stairs that day and I saw Erin standing there with that look on her face and my Van Halen T-shirt stretched out before her, I knew within seconds.

Nooooooooooo!!!

I couldn't believe Erin broke the news to me in this fashion and, like I said, I have never let her live it down. I don't think even she realized how devastating this news was to me. There went any hope of me ever seeing him play guitar live again. There went any hope of hearing any form of new music from Van Halen. One of the greatest guitarists in history had been silenced forever. The finality of it was crushing on so many levels.

Four years have now passed and Alex Van Halen is breaking his silence about his grief following his brother's death. Alex was no slouch himself as the highly energetic drummer for the band he and his brother formed. Ironically enough and probably shocking to some, Alex is the one who started out on guitar and Eddie on drums until it, as Alex recalls, it became extremely obvious, quickly, that Eddie had a gift for playing guitar.

Alex released a book, Brothers, on October 22 which chronicles his life with Eddie and the emotions he felt when Eddie died. I have seen interviews he has done since then on YouTube promoting the book, but also discussing his grief following his brother's passing and how he has been dealing with it – which is to say, not well.

It got me thinking about writing an article about the brothers, but I had ideas for other articles floating around in my head first. But, this morning, when I was checking YouTube, under "recommendations" I saw that Alex was a guest this week on Anderson Cooper's podcast, All There Is.

I am a big fan of that podcast and highly recommend it for anyone dealing with the loss of a loved one. My last article focused on an episode of All There Is which had Spiderman actor, Andrew Garfield, discussing his struggles with dealing with the passing of his mother.

I, instantly, clicked on the video and watched it. I was struck by how eloquent, thoughtful, and well spoken Alex is. He was always a jokester on stage and in interviews during the band's heydays back in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.

What I saw and heard before me now on this podcast and other recent interviews was someone completely different. This was a man transformed.

Alex is now 71 years old. When Eddie died in 2020, Eddie was only 65. There was only a two year difference between the two. For Alex's entire life, Eddie was there. Cooper points out how most siblings grow up together but then go their separate ways around the age of 18, but that was not the case with the Van Halen brothers. They grew up together and then played in a band together their entire lives.

"65 years together. (Alex laughs) Almost every day physically, at least, mentally and spiritually," Alex replies, fondly.

Just like every relationship, they'd argue and fight with each other sometimes, maybe even often, but if an outsider threatened one of them, the two would come together in a unified defense. They were a team.

That was their bond – almost like an unspoken pact. The brothers weren't even eight years old when their parents moved from the Netherlands to California. They didn't know a word of English when they came to the United States. They faced ridicule and bullying at school for being perceived as dumb foreigners – for being different.

That is where their bond was strengthened. It was them against the world.

They had a hard time making friends. The only friends they had were each other – and music. Their father was a musician. Their father started his children on the piano around the time the kids were the age of six.

One of the many reasons the first incarnation of Van Halen broke up in 1984 was that Eddie wanted to get away from so many guitar-heavy songs. He had been there, done that. He had perfected that. It had gotten boring for him. He wanted to try something new.

Around this time, synthesizers were becoming all the rage. Every musician from every genre was experimenting with it.

A synthesizer, basically, is an electronic piano. In 1984, Eddie wanted to experiment with changing the sound of the band. He wanted their next album to feature more of himself playing on the synthesizer and focus less on his guitar riffs.

David Lee Roth saw the direction Eddie wanted to take the band and wanted no part of it - plus, he wanted to go solo to do his own thing, anyway. Eddie would later claim that Roth, as well as Sammy Hagar, suffered from LSD – Lead Singer Disease.

Eddie's focus on the synthesizer produced one of the band's most popular songs and opened them up to a whole new audience with their crossover hit, Jump.

Who could ever forget Eddie's opening to that song? It was just Eddie playing a simple melody on the synthesizer. No other instruments. Dun, dun... dun, dun, dun...

I was in middle school when that song came out. I remember taking a music class that year. I never enjoyed going to it. It was boring - the typical drums, symbols, triangles, xylophones. None of us knew what we were doing so it was just a mish-mash of annoying noises.

Yet, one of my favorite memories of middle school was what happened one day in that class. We were all milling around the front of the room waiting for class to begin. I noticed one of my classmates – a very smart and talented kid – walk to the back of the room and stand next to a synthesizer stashed back there. He tinkered with the keys a bit and then started playing the intro to Jump. It was spot on. It was awesome. I had never been to a concert. I was amazed to hear a recreation of a sound I had only heard on the radio... or MTV. It lasted only about fifteen seconds, but I will never forget it.

But that was the influence Eddie had. I was twelve years old and I first learned of Van Halen from that song, Jump, and that student playing it in music class that day. I am sure that student was inspired to branch away from his classical piano background and explore new genres. I often wonder where he is now. I've always imagined him to be playing Carnegie Hall.

But I digress (shocker, I know). The point of all that is that I found it endearing that despite everyone considering Eddie one of the greatest guitar players ever, even at that time, he found the need and desire to want to put his guitar down and revert back to his childhood when he would just sit at a piano and play a melody for his dad.

Eddie and Alex's father died of a heart attack in 1986 at the age of 66. In the podcast, Cooper recalls how Alex once described himself as devastated at his father's death:

"Uh, beyond. I can't even put it into words. Whether it is because we are all conditioned to believe a certain path of life or how it is supposed to be and how it supposed to end, this particular incident contradicted everything I was aware of, or the fact that he is just no longer here.

We related to him. I mean, you could go anywhere in the world with him, and he could find his way. That confidence, it gives you a confidence.

I have a piece of footage of us, leaving Holland, as we get on the boat, the four of us look like four ducks walking in a row and we're waving. We have no idea where we are going, what we are walking into, but as long as the boss is leading, we are good."

It is that sense of security that a parent gives you. When that parent dies, you feel so exposed and vulnerable, like a superhero without their suit.

That is how I felt when my mother died in 2021, and continue to feel to this day. I felt that as long as she was here, I was good. Now she is gone, and I don't feel good anymore.

The best part of the video podcast is when Alex references something he claims he saw pop up one day on his computer shortly after Eddie's death. It was a clip of Billy Bob Thornton talking about the death of his brother in 1998.

"My brother, Jimmy, he was a young guy. In 1998, he died, suddenly, of a heart problem they never knew he had. I have never been the same since my brother died. There is a melancholy in me that never goes away. I am 50% happy and 50% sad at any given moment. And the only advice I can give someone when they lose someone like that is [Thornton hesitates and looks off to the side] ... you won't ever get over it, and the more you know that, and embrace it, the better off you are.

I don't want to forget my brother and I don't want to forget how I felt when he died, because he deserves it. That's how important he was to me. So if I have to suffer and if I have to be sad for the rest of my life, and if I have to be lonely without him, then that's the way I'll honor him. I'll be sad and melancholy for the rest of my life and I accept it and I live with it."

You could tell, watching the video, how much the loss of Thornton's brother still eats away at him over two decades later. If this is how Thornton looks now recalling his brother's death after all this time, I can't even imagine what he went through when it happened.

Alex praised how accurate, eloquent, and articulate Thornton was in describing, exactly, what he was now feeling.

In my grief support group session last week, we touched on what Thornton was saying about knowing the grief will never go away and learning to accept that and live with it.

My therapist is a little quirky, but that is what makes her engaging. She gave a bit of an odd analogy to illustrate the point of living wit grief, but it works. She prefaced her analogy by saying she has always been a big Star Wars fan. Ok, here goes her analogy:

Imagine you are Princess Leia. You are having a party. You invite Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2. You're all having a good time. The doorbell rings. You open the door and it's... Darth Vader.

Now, you could slam the door in Darth Vader's face and hope he just goes away, but would happen? That's right. He will ring the door bell again, and he will keep ringing and ringing the doorbell until you let him in. He will not go away.

So what should you do? You should open the door, acknowledge him, let him come in, give him a drink and say to him, 'You can stay, but you are going to stay over here in this corner and I am going to be over there with my friends.'

My therapist then mentioned how you will have to go over to Darth Vader and acknowledge his presence from time to time, but you just continue to give him a drink and then walk away.

Of course, me, being the smart ass that I am, I raise my hand and say, "Yeah, and you keep giving Darth Vader drinks until, before you know it, he is drunk and jumps on top of the living room table and starts singing karaoke to 'Welcome to the Jungle.'"

You don't want me in your support group.

But the point is valid. The grief will always be there. It isn't going to go away. If you are waiting for that day to come, you will continue to struggle, because it is not going to happen.

The best course of action is to acknowledge it will always be there. View it as a way of honoring the memory of your loved one. They don't deserve to be forgotten or pushed away. That grief is now them. Accept it. That is how they live on inside of you.

It has me thinking of one of the proudest things I did at my mother's funeral. I did a eulogy for my mother at the church. At the end of my eulogy, I said something to the effect of.

"My mother was the most humble person I will ever know. She didn't do anything for attention. She was more than happy to stand in the background – doing dishes while you enjoyed the dinner she cooked for you. All she cared about was serving her husband and caring for her children.

I know what I am about to ask is untraditional, but I feel it needs to be done. My mother never sought praise or accolades. She never got to experience the experience of a crowd applauding her. Today, as we prepare to bid farewell to my dear mother, I would ask all of you to rise and turn to my mother's casket, think of a fond memory of her, and give her a round of applause – the applause she was never given in life – in recognition of a life well lived and in thanks for the happiness, joy, and fond memories she gave all of us. I love you, mae.

I just want to end on one last thing Alex mentioned. He went into incredible detail of his final moments with his brother. He spoke about how he didn't have the opportunity to spend the final months of his brother's life with him due to COVID. Eddie's immune system was extremely weak. So Alex recounts how his visits were relegated to him standing in Eddie's driveway talking to him through a window.

Alex was able to be in the room with Eddie when he took his last breath.

"All I know is that when he stopped breathing, I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. There were no bells. There were no angels. It just stopped. And that was it.

It was a very uneventful ending to an eventful life."

That last line stuck with me. It is something that has bugged me since my mother's death. I watched her die a little more and more each day for about five years. Doctors were slow to diagnose her with dementia, but I knew years before doctors did. I knew my mother better than anyone else.

Ultimately, she was diagnosed with, and died from, Lewy Body Dementia. She worked her so hard her whole life, in a factory during the day and at home at night. It was non-stop working for her.

It was a very uneventful ending to an eventful life.

It was another thing I said during her eulogy was that I found it hard, as I looked at her coffin, to believe she was laying still in there. She didn't like to stop. She always had to be moving. She was like a caged animal. She had boundless energy. I imagined her still trying to claw her way out of that coffin.

Now you can rest, mother.

That may, actually, have been my closing line after I said, "I love you." But she didn't deserve to go like that. She deserved to live to 90, and beyond. She deserved those years to be full of trips to the park and the beach, or just to be sitting in the backyard looking at her garden.

We were a team together. She gave me confidence. She gave me strength. Together, we could take on the world.

Alex had 65 years with Eddie. I had 50 years with my mother. It doesn't matter how rich you are or how famous you are, death looks the same for everyone.

No one deserves to see angels any more than anyone else. And we all grieve.