Eric Dane ❤️

FATHER FIRST

Most people met Eric Dane through work, or at social work events, through the version of him the world had decided he was. Which, to be fair, was not an inaccurate version. He was that. He was all of that.

I met him through my kids. At a kid’s birthday party. Eric was on the ground with the children, actually playing, genuinely inside it. Not peripheral, not performing. He was the only father there doing it, and it was the first thing I noticed about him.

That was how, twelve years ago, we became friends. Through kids. Through his wife Rebecca. He would pick up his girls from school and stop at my house at 3:30 so they could use the bathroom before the drive back to Beverly Hills. Eric Dane at my front door at 3:30 because his kids needed to pee. Nobody tells you that’s what friendship looks like until you’re in it.

My kids loved him. There was something about him with children that had nothing to do with being gentle or careful. Eric was fun. His wit was laser sharp and he aimed it at kids the same way he aimed it at adults, because he treated children like humans whose opinions actually mattered. He’d walk in and ask what their favorite album was, and he wanted the answer.

The last time I saw him I didn’t know it was the last time, so unoriginal I almost didn’t write it, but originality doesn’t care about grief. It was a Sunday dinner at a friend’s house. Eric and I ended up seated together and talked for three hours about family, life, extremes. Taking stock of things, in the way that people do when they’ve started to understand what matters. He was a beautiful person. Beautiful in his face, yes, the whole world knew that. But more in the way he showed up in the ordinary places where nobody was watching, and was exactly the same person he was everywhere else.

That’s the rarest thing. That’s what I’ll miss. That’s what I was fortunate to experience.