Opinion
The legendary “Three’s Company” star Suzanne Somers died two months ago at the age of 76 after a decades-long battle with breast cancer. Her widower Alan Hamel, who was married to her for 46 years, is now revealing the romantic reason that she was buried in hiking boots.
Somers Buried In Hiking Boots
“Suzanne never really had boots designed for hiking on the rocks, so I ordered the Timberland boots,” Hamel, 87, told People Magazine. “[I] made my gift personal by drawing on them in a few words that represented our life to some degree and made them very personal to Suzanne.”
Hamel went on to say that Somers had “every manolo blahnik ever made,” but it would “have been predictable but not very personal” to have her “wearing [manolo blahniks] for her final trip.”
“Every time she put on the Timberlands, she said, ‘I am wearing you, and my boots will keep me safe,’” he explained.
Hamel then said that he and Somers developed an “early morning routine” that called for her signature boot which “always included hiking to the top of one of the mountains, where there was a creek and a large flat rock in the middle of the creek.”
“By the time we got there, which was about a two-hour hike, the rock had been warmed by the morning sun,” said Hamel. “We would have our lunch on the rock and then take a one-hour nap on the rock and then hike back down and go to work.”
Related: Suzanne Somers Appears To Husband Of 46 Years In ‘Vision’ Days After Her Death
Somers’ Death
Hamel was by Somers’ side when she died one day before her 77th birthday.
“We were in bed together and her breathing was erratic, and I had been talking to her for hours,” Hamel told NBC News. “There was no response except when I kissed her, she responded, and then around 5 o’clock in the morning, she was gone.”
Somers had revealed to the world back in July that her cancer had returned, and she’d spent the six weeks before her death seeing specialists in Chicago. She arrived back at her Palm Springs, California home just a few days before her passing, and Hamel thought that she seemed alright at first.
“She was eating and was, you know, taking her medicine,” he recalled. “All of a sudden she wasn’t responding and she wasn’t eating and she wasn’t taking her meds. As I know her so well I thought, ‘I wonder if I should call 911?’ And I knew that she wouldn’t want that and that she did not want to go to a hospital.”
Related: Suzanne Somers’ Husband Reveals All About Her Final Moments
Hamel Stayed By Somers’ Side
Hamel didn’t leave her side during the final days of her life.
“I talked to her for hours, every night, and I assumed she could hear me because her lips responded. Hopefully, she was understanding what I was saying,” he said. “I’m just kind of shuffling along right now. Fortunately, we have a great family and they were all here.”
“I wouldn’t say I was surprised,” Hamel later added to Today, referring to her death. “She was heavy breathing at the very end, and I gave her a pill to relax the breathing but it didn’t work. And I was grateful that I was with her when she left us, and it was very peaceful and it was beautiful. And she was beautiful.”
Somers was an incredible woman who was known for decades for being one of the only people in Hollywood brave enough to express conservative views. Please join us in saying a prayer for Hamel and the rest of her family as they continue to mourn her.
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