Two months have passed since Beth Chapman died after battling throat cancer and husband Duane "Dog" Chapman says he and his family are struggling to deal with the loss and some of his kids are "barely making it."
The "Dog the Bounty Hunter" star admitted to People on Wednesday that his kids are having a hard time and he wished he could take his wife's place.
"Each one copes differently, there is a few that [are] really barely making it," Duane said. "We don't know what to do. We haven't read, we weren't prepared."
The 66-year-old said when his own mother died, he wished it had been his father who had passed instead. Now that he has lost his own wife, Duane felt he needed to apologize to their children for not being the one to die.
"So I went to them and said, 'I'm so sorry that I didn't die first and mom did,'" he explained to People. "And they were like, 'Yeah dad, why?'" Duane continued. "So I was like, 'Oh my God, I know what that feels like, I should've been the one. The guy goes first.'"
Beth was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017 and underwent successful surgery that same year, but the cancer later returned. She began aggressive chemotherapy but later decided to discontinue the treatment and seek out alternative therapies. In June she was rushed to a Honolulu hospital and put into a medically induced coma, where she died on June 26 at the age of 51.
Her death has been hard on the family.
Duane admitted his wife was the one who ran the household and ensured discipline among their children. He was the "softy of the group" but now that Beth is gone, he has had to pick up the slack — but is struggling to do so. "I am doing their laundry, I'm vacuuming, making my own bed," he said. "So I don't wanna lie, they do nothing. They're kids. … It's just, 'Dad's there, he can do it.'"
The couple's youngest daughter Bonnie Chapman recently opened up about her parents in an Instagram Q&A session, noting that Beth was Duane's soulmate.
"No one can replace her in his heart," she said, according to Fox News. "Their love was one of a kind, it made me believe love truly exists."
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