In late June, Beth Chapman passed away after battling throat cancer for years. She was only 51 years old.
Now, her grieving husband is opening up in a new interview.
He explains how Beth tried to prepare him, and shares the demand she made of him right before she had to go to the hospital.
Duane Chapman sat down with Entertainment Tonight to discuss how he is coping — or not coping — with his wife’s death.
"[With any] new experience that you have, you don’t know how you’re doing because you’ve never experienced it," Duane reasons.
But he notes: "I have a lot of people who depend on me."
He’s not just referring to his family, but likely to Dog’s Most Wanted crew.
"All my supervisors said, ‘Dog, it’s time to man up,’" Duane reveals.
"So," he expresses. "I’m trying to man up."
"For two to three years," Duane recalls. "She knew this might happen."
That is, tragically, what a cancer diagnosis so often means.
"So she would say, ‘Who is going to sit next to you?’" he describes. "And I said, ‘No one.’"
Duane quotes her as having instructed him: "’Big Daddy, you better not let another girl take my place.’"
‘I said, ‘I won’t,’" he acknowledges.
Ever since Beth was first diagnosed with throat cancer, the two of them hadstruggled to cope with their new reality.
"I needed therapy," Duane expresses. "And the therapy she used when she was sick was to hunt."
He is obviously referring to his profession.
"Her therapy, you know, was hunting, bounty hunting, catching the bad guy," he explains.
Even so, things had been "hard" on both of them.
"Even though she is not physically there, mentally and spiritually she is there," Duane says.
He affirms: "There is not another Beth."
"There’ll never be another Beth," Duane adds.
He expresses: "There ain’t a girl built like another Beth."
We certainly do not doubt it!
As he has repeatedly stated in public, Duane had told his wife that he was "not going to let her die."
"The last few moments she said, ‘Come in here right now, in the bathroom,’" he recalls.
"I went in," Duane continues. "And she said, ‘Look at me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you’re freaking beautiful baby.’"
"’Look at me, Duane Chapman.’ And I did, I always saw Beth," he shares.
"And," Duane narrates. "She said, ‘Please, let me go.’"
"And I didn’t even make a decision," Duane admits. "I almost said, ‘I can’t.’"
"Before I could say, ‘Alright,’ she couldn’t breathe and I called the ambulance…" he reveals.
"But," Duane notes. "Every day she talked as if she was not there."
He says that she would instruct him on things like: "’Here’s what to do with this, here’s what to do with that.’"
"’Don’t keep running your mouth,’" she advised him. "’When they ask you a specific question, just answer that.’"
"So, prepared?" Duane asks. "No, you’re never, ever prepared."
"You can’t prepare," he acknowledges. "There is no way."
"I did not know that this was going to happen that day," Duane concludes.
That is some powerful, heartbreaking stuff.
