Susan Lucci revealed that she “felt like half a person” following the 2022 death of her husband, Helmut Huber, in new book La Lucci.
“I believed I had lost my light. There are no words to say how much I was missing him. And with that came a feeling of complete hopelessness,” Lucci, 79, wrote in the memoir, which was released on Tuesday, February 3. “The encouragement to remain hopeful was shared with me so many times, but the only thing I truly hoped for was for Helmut to come walking through the door.”
Lucci added, “We all want to have light. And when I thought I had lost it — well, it was crippling.”
Huber died at age 84 in March 2022, one month after suffering a stroke.
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Lucci recalled receiving a phone call from Huber, who was “slurring his words.” Huber was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery, which went “extremely well,” Lucci wrote.
“The first day, we had every hope. By the second day, however, he wasn’t responding quite as much. On the third day, even less,” she recalled. “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.”
Lucci married Huber in 1969. They share two kids, Liza and Andres. Lucci wrote that she was by Huber’s bedside for the entire month before his death.
“As the weeks went on, it had become apparent that there was absolutely no hope that Helmut would recover,” she wrote. “He fought so hard. I know he tried to live. I could see it. But he didn’t make it.”
After Huber was laid to rest, Lucci wrote that she was left with her “thoughts” along with “sadness” and “grief” over the loss of her husband.
“I couldn’t imagine living without Helmut. I … could … not … imagine … it,” she wrote. “I sometimes still wonder, how is it that I am living and he is gone?”
Lucci remembered her husband as someone who “lit up every room he was in” in the book.
“He touched everyone around him, leaving a lasting glow of love and laughter. After he passed, I thought I’d never get my light back again,” the All My Children star wrote. “But I also knew I had to make a choice and somehow find the courage to put one foot in front of the other. It was better than lying on the floor in a puddle, completely destroyed.”
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Lucci added, “For a while there, that is exactly how I felt. For a long time, nothing mattered.”
Lucci spoke to Us Weekly exclusively at the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Red Dress Collection Concert on Thursday, January 29, about her two-year experience writing La Lucci — and how the book allowed her to process the grief from losing Huber.
“I didn’t expect it, but it helped me to heal,” she said.
La Lucci is out now.
