Dax Shepard grew emotional while remembering the meaningful way his wife, Kristen Bell, supported him while he was caring for his dying father.
The 51-year-old actor opened up about grieving his father Dave Robert Shepard, Sr. — who died in 2012 after being diagnosed with small-cell carcinoma, an aggressive cancer — during a conversation with Anderson Cooper at the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University last month.
After Cooper asked Dax to discuss the “gift” he and Bell gave Dave during his final moments of life, the Armchair Expert host’s voice began to break while pointing out how his wife of 12 years is so “intuitive.”
“I was growing really upset with the amount of people visiting my dad, and they were all really well-intentioned,” he said, noting that these visitors were in AA with Dave and also grieving. “I was starting to resent that I couldn’t just be in there with my dad, and I was starting to get quite overwhelmed with that.”
“I went outside to sit in the car to get a breather, and I called Kristen to vent about it,” he continued. “I was complaining, and she said, ‘Uh, it’s okay. I’m here. Look to the left.’ Mind you, we live in California, and I’m in Detroit. And she’s standing there, seven months pregnant. She knew I was struggling, and she had flown and not told me and figured out where this hospital was.”
Dax said that when he and Bell went into the hospital, Dave got to feel the Frozen star’s growing baby bump. He showcased a photo of the sweet moment during the book festival, before Cooper read what the actor wrote about Dave in a 2013 blog post.
Cooper recited: “You said, ‘she lifted her shirt up, and he put his hand on her swollen stomach. He left it there for the better part of an hour. He was smiling from ear to ear, sitting contentedly, unable to put together a sentence but still capable of connecting to the new family we were creating. He wasn’t going to make it to the birth, but that didn’t get in the way of meeting the new baby.”
“It was an emotional and triumphant moment, one I will never forget,” Shepard’s post continued.
“If I live to be 1,000, I will still be indebted to my wife for giving him that one last thrill.”
Dax chimed in to hilariously praise his wife, adding: “She’s a gangster, y’all.”
At the time, Bell was pregnant with her and Dax’s first child, Lincoln, who was born in 2013. They welcomed their second daughter, Delta, the following year.
Dax has previously spoken about having a complicated relationship with his father, an addict who was absent for most of his son’s childhood. However, the actor has expressed his regret about the resentment he had towards his dad.
“I wish I could have loved my dad as much as he was alive as I do now,” he said during a November episode of his Armchair Expert podcast. “And I wonder if that’s a common regret for people who lose parents.”
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