Eric Dane’s posthumous memoir shares one last message we can all learn from - The Independent

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Near the end of Eric Dane’s posthumous memoir, the Grey’s Anatomy star describes a daydream in which he can run again. In the passage, Dane – who experienced progressive muscle paralysis after his ALS diagnosis in 2024 – imagines himself running through New York City in a zig-zagged, burning sprint. He speeds down Fifth Avenue, screaming and jumping through traffic and eventually flying through the air. “I am invincible!” he declares.

The euphoric pages are followed by a juxtaposed description of his reality: Dane, four months before his death from the neurodegenerative disease at age 53, took one last trip with his best friends to Tokyo for an Oasis concert. The actor could not walk, stand, or feed himself, and relied on his friends for caretaking. He recalls weeping during the concert as his friends wrapped their arms around him, sobbing as they knew it was “our final time together.”

Dane finished My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments, out this week, in the months before he died in February from ALS, also known as motor neurone disease. Dane, who was unable to write and type, presumably dictated the memories recounted in the book, which is written directly to his two teenage daughters, Billie and Georgia, who he shared with his wife Rebecca Gayheart. He often addresses his “girls” throughout the book, giving them life advice on dating, working and growing up. Dane makes it clear he wants to leave behind a life manual for after he’s gone.

As readers, though, there’s so much we can learn from his lessons. His account is wide-ranging and raw. He tells wild stories about his partying days as a young actor struggling with substance abuse in Los Angeles. Later, he pulls back the curtain on his roles as the handsome Dr. Mark Sloan on Grey’s — how his struggles with addiction contributed to his exit from the show — and the terrifying Cal Jacobs in Euphoria, which he describes as the “most rewarding and important” job he ever had.

Perhaps a result of dictation through the strained speech caused by ALS, Dane’s book consists of short chapters made up of even shorter sentences. The timeline of his memories becomes jumbled at points, and stories contain platitudes and long-winded tangents. It is not polished, but it’s not meant to be.

It’s this messiness that makes the humanity in his stories shine. Compared to other celebrity memoirs that attempt to sell a relatable picture through a ghostwriter’s words, Dane’s stories are told out of something that feels more like necessity and care. He admits his wrongdoings and is honest about his conditions — the imposter syndrome that accompanies fame, the humiliation of his addiction and the devastation of his fatal disease — in hopes of painting a truer picture of himself for his fans and, most importantly, leaving a roadmap for his daughters.

The imminence of Dane’s death hangs like a shadow over the book, painting even the happiest moments in a bittersweet hue. But in a twistedly funny way, it also allows him to be careless and generous with his memories. He is not afraid to name any names on his way out. He calls out Billy Corgan for being a bad neighbor. He apologizes to Josh Duhamel for their fist fight on the set of the TV show Las Vegas, and remembers disappointing Ed Harris at an audition he was unprepared for due to his heroin use.

In other parts of the book, he admits to unloading a shotgun on a Hollywood street and stealing syringes from hospital rooms before his friends had him put under a 5150 psychiatric hold in the throes of his addiction.

“I remember all those drugged-out, dangerous nights, nights I wish I could forget, years I wish I could have back,” Dane writes. “I somehow avoided overdosing. Miraculously, I escaped unscathed from street fights. I never got beat up, stabbed, or shot. I escaped with my life.”

With nothing to lose and everything to pass on, Dane decides not to lie and say he has no regrets at the end of his life. Instead, he resignedly admits his acceptance, writing: “I don’t feel in any hurry to correct my mistakes because I know I can’t. I have regrets, but I have to live with them. Got no choice.”

For all of its honesty, the memoir is an undeniably excruciating read. Some moments in the book are almost too painful to bear. Dane recalls being seven when his father died by suicide, and looking at other children being children and thinking, “I don’t get to play like that anymore.”

Nearly every sentence about his daughters is heartbreaking. He recounts being backstage at his daughter’s last dance performance and not being able to wrap his arms around her for a hug. In another passage, he describes his youngest daughter saving him from drowning during a snorkeling trip. Dane breaks down in tears when he realizes he will never swim again.

Dane, in the rawest moments of his life, continuously comes back to the biggest lesson of his memoir: you do not have as much time as you think you do. But there’s a caveat: pace yourself. “You have to learn to take your time. I had such a problem with that,” he writes. “I wanted everything right away.”

“Girls, slow down,” he tells his daughters. “Live in that contradiction. You don’t have all the time in the world, but take your freaking time. Don’t rush...Find those moments, savor them, live in them. I learned to do that. It wasn’t easy and it took some time, almost too much time. But I got there. You will, too.”

With a book full of his most vital and imperfect moments, Dane has left his daughters this gift: a brave lesson of vulnerability in place of invincibility. We’re lucky he decided to share it with us, too.

My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments is published by Penguin Random House and available for purchase now.