It’s been two years since beloved dancer Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss died by suicide on the age of 40. His loss of life was deeply tragic and met with many tributes and messages from Dancing With The Stars vets, his long-time colleague Ellen DeGeneres, and extra. His spouse, Allison Holker, has additionally candidly posted and spoken about this devastating loss. Now, as she prepares to launch a memoir, This Far, she opened up about what occurred after she discovered about her companion’s loss of life.
Boss died in December 2022, and he was present in a lodge room after he shot himself. Within the lead-up to studying this, Holker didn’t know the place he had gone, and he or she thought he had checked into rehab, due to his marijuana use. Nevertheless, when the cops confirmed as much as inform her what occurred, it was incomprehensible, as she wrote in her e book, which Individuals printed an excerpt of:
About 20 minutes later, the 2 cops out in entrance had been joined by a 3rd officer. He was older, very candy. He got here to the door, trailed by the others. The brand new arrival checked out me with such compassion in his eyes. He requested me to sit down down, and my coronary heart sank. They don’t ask you to sit down until what they’re about to inform you could be very, very unhealthy. I couldn’t deliver myself to sit down down. If I didn’t sit, then possibly no matter he was about to inform me wouldn’t be actual. A darkish vitality settled over the room as I stood frozen in place. ‘Your husband has been discovered,’ he mentioned. ‘He’s not in rehab.’ He sat down on the kitchen desk. I stayed the place I used to be. ‘Your husband was present in a lodge. He was discovered by the maid. He shot himself.’ No. No. No. No.
Previous to explaining this, Holker famous that earlier than studying about her husband’s loss of life she knew she was searching for one thing, however didn’t know what that was. She wrote that she discovered a letter from Boss that he had written two weeks earlier as “a dedication to wean himself off weed.” She additionally famous that she filed a lacking individual report and known as police as quickly as she may.
Safety footage of her house confirmed the dancer leaving to get in an Uber with a black backpack. Cops additionally found that the gun Boss had bought in 2020 was lacking. Holker wrote that on the time, “the probably ramifications of this absence went utterly over [her] head.” She didn’t notice what that would imply.
Additionally, she had been calling rehab facilities searching for him. Whereas nobody may inform her if he was there because of privateness legal guidelines, one requested if she’d like to go away a message for him in case he was right here, and Holker took that as affirmation.
After they discovered his physique, she couldn’t consider it was him, however his tattoos and ID shortly confirmed that it was:
I informed them they’d discovered a Black man, however it didn’t imply they’d discovered my man. Stephen would by no means do what this officer was suggesting. Ever-so-gently, the officer defined Stephen had left a letter and his ID. He had been recognized by his tattoos, together with that one under his elbow: I’m . . . I’ve . . . I deserve . . . My abdomen clenched.
She defined that tWitch had gotten that tattoo on a visit to New Zealand. He had intentions of returning to broaden the piece so it included all their youngsters. Nevertheless, they by no means bought to do this, as she wrote that this tattoo was “diminished to a macabre figuring out mark.”
Like Holker, it was laborious for a lot of to consider that tWitch was gone. His buddy and colleague Ellen DeGeneres paid tribute by writing that he was “pure love and lightweight,” and that sentiment was true in most of the tributes from others. Holker’s view on her husband’s life and legacy has held that message too.
So, when he was abruptly gone it was surprising and unfathomable, as Holker wrote:
I raced down the hallway, shrieking. The sound that escaped from my throat was feral. I’d by no means heard the likes of it earlier than. I collapsed onto the ground in a fetal place, the place I’d keep for a number of minutes, keening as one in every of our assistants held me tight. Nothing made any sense. I used to be so scared. I felt so alone at the same time as I used to be in one other’s embrace. The world went black. The partitions closed in on me till I assumed I used to be going to suffocate. Till that second, I had by no means understood the phrase ‘It’s just like the world stopped.’ That’s precisely the way it felt: as if time froze. I actually couldn’t consider that Stephen was lifeless.
Holker wasn’t conscious of Boss’s drug habit earlier than his loss of life. It was later revealed that he was scuffling with childhood trauma too.
Within the two years since his passing, Holker has saved his legacy alive and he or she persistently posts about working by grief, life updates and the way a lot she adores Boss.
Now, her e book, This Far: My Story of Love, Loss and Embracing the Gentle, is ready to come back out on February 4. It’s a memoir about Holker’s life in addition to her relationship with Stephen “tWitch” Boss, and based on the e book’s description, it “reveals how she has navigated the emotional and monetary aftermath of Stephen’s alternative” and the way she and her household moved ahead into a brand new chapter of their lives.