Susan Lucci is showing her love for her deceased husband, Helmut Huber, in a new way through her memoir La Lucci.
After 52 years of marriage and four years after his death in 2022, Lucci is slowly making her way through “complete hopelessness” to joy and prizing her late husband’s life.
Helmut Huber’s Death
In 2022, Huber was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery after he was “slurring his words” during a phone call to Susan, which was revealed to be a stroke.
While the surgery went “extremely well” for the 84-year-old, things started to take a turn by the second day as “he wasn’t responding quite as much. By the third day, even less,” recalled Lucci. “It was around day three that the doctors induced a coma to help resolve the bleeding that was happening in his brain. Unfortunately, he never came out of it.”
Susan added, “As the weeks went on, it had become apparent that there was absolutely no hope that Helmut would recover. He fought so hard. I know he tried to live. I could see it. But he didn’t make it.”
He passed away in March, remembered as “an extraordinary husband, father, grandfather, and friend,” according to a statement from Susan’s publicist.
Helmut and Susan married in 1969, having two children together, Liza and Andreas.
After his death, Susan was beside herself. “I was completely lost [after he died]. And it’s so isolating. You feel so alone, even though I had the most wonderful friend … I am so grateful for the people who stood by me.”
Seeing “Signs” of Her Husband
When the pain was still fresh, Lucci couldn’t listen to songs with lyrics and felt like “half a person.”
However, at some point, she started seeing signs of Huber.
The first one was dimes. Lucci found them everywhere, whether it was paired together on a bench or in a bag of coins. The dimes represented Huber’s birthday, October 10th, which he loved for the double 10s.
The next sign was the feathers. It didn’t matter if there were no birds around, or landing just on her place setting. Lucci saw it as a “tickle” from the man with a great sense of humor.
While she didn’t plan to tell anyone about the signs, they joined fond memories and lessons from her grief journey in La Lucci.
Finding Joy Again
When Huber died, Lucci struggled with his absence and accepting that he was gone. The pain was lessened with prayer and friendships, but the turning point came when a friend told her she had a choice in how she grieved. She was allowed to keep living and have joy in doing so.
“You don’t know where you’re going to learn your lessons, you don’t know what things are going to be said to you to help you through,” Lucci shared. “My husband’s friends stayed with me, my friends, our friends, and I feel so incredibly grateful for them. We have a lot of laughs. We do things together and I’m just so happy to be in their company. They helped me stand up when I didn’t think I could.”
Today, Lucci wakes up every morning “looking for joy.” Some of the ways she does so is in work, travel, with friends, and precious family time.
While she does get waves of grief, she doesn’t “fight it,” and instead, “just [goes] with it.”
Lucci’s Memoir
All of her grief, happiness, and reflection of losing her husband is wrapped up in the pages of her new book, La Lucci. The book was released on February 3rd and is a follow-up to 2011’s All My Life: A Memoir.
The process for her novel began “in the middle of the night,” she said. “I keep a pen and paper next to my side of the bed in case I get an idea or in case I have to write something down so I don’t keep rolling it around and memorizing it, so I could sleep. And in this case, I started waking up and things just started pouring out of me.”
The book dives into her life as a soap opera actress and memories shared over five decades with Huber. She shares he was a “classically trained chef” with a “great sense of humor” who liked to call her “Susie” and enjoyed driving fast, skiing, and golfing.
When considering what Lucci misses most about Huber, she commented, “Everything. It’s hard to say one thing. I just miss him, miss his presence, miss sharing things together, like coffee in the morning.”
If you want to explore Lucci’s journey through grief, the memoir is available at major retailers.