Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss’s widow has revealed the dancer’s last heartbreaking words to his daughter before his tragic death.
On December 13, 2022, it was announced that Boss, who was best known for his appearances as the DJ on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, died at the age of 40 after his body was discovered at a motel in Los Angeles.
The TV star’s cause of death was ruled as suicide by a coroner, and county officials further confirmed that the late dancer died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, TMZ reported.
Boss shared son Maddox, eight, and daughters Zaia, five, and Weslie, 16, with his widow, Alison Holker.
More than two years after her late husband’s unexpected death, Holker spoke to PEOPLE about Boss’s final days, revealing that he dropped their eldest daughter, Weslie, off at school before he went missing.
“I wish I could be your Superman,” Boss reportedly told the 16-year-old – who happened to be the last person in the family to see him alive.
“Having someone say last words to you that you didn’t really process at the time as being anything wrong… that’s really hard, especially as a teenager,” the 36-year-old dancer told the outlet. “She handles it with far more grace than she should have to.”
“We took the steps to really help her, and communicate with her, and make her feel seen and heard,” she continued, adding that she and her kids began intense therapy in the wake of the late DJ’s death.
“I think she also sees those words as something beautiful, and also ugly. It’s a battle that she’s going to always have with herself, but I know she can see it from both sides,” Holker shared.
Elsewhere in the interview, Holker disclosed that weeks after the TV star’s death, she found drugs in their home, specifically hidden inside shoe boxes.
“I was with one of my really dear friends, and we were cleaning out the closet and picking out an outfit for him for the funeral,” she said. “It was a really triggering moment for me because there were a lot of things I discovered in our closet that I did not know existed. It was very alarming to me to learn that there was so much happening that I had no clue [about].
“It was a really scary moment in my life to figure that out, but it also helped me process that he was going through so much and he was hiding so much, and there must have been a lot of shame in that,” Holker added.
The mom-of-three believes that she and Boss had “very honest” communication about everything, including his marijuana use, sharing that he would go into their guesthouse to smoke or drink after their children went to bed. “That was his alone time. It was his time to recharge, and that was okay,” she said.
But as she looked through her late husband’s journals hoping to find clarity and closure after his untimely passing, she learned that he had hidden heartbreaking secrets from even those closest to him.
“He was wrestling with a lot inside himself, and he was trying to self-medicate and cope with all those feelings because he didn’t want to put it on anyone because he loved everyone so much,” she says of her partner, who allegedly implied that he was sexually abused by a male figure during his childhood in his journal.
“He didn’t want other people to take on his pain,” she added.
Although initially hurt to discover her late partner’s secrets, Holker later realized that the journals gave her “a better perspective of where he was in life and the type of things [Boss] was struggling with”.
The dancer has leaned on family, who have helped her work through her feelings. “It was really hard to put all the pieces together…Through certain discussions, even with friends and things that have been said, reading through his journals … you realize he went through a lot as a child and never faced it,” she said.
“It’s hard to think that he never opened up to someone and wanted to face it, to get through on the other side. I really hope people dealing with the same thing will help themselves out of the shadows and [know] you’re going to be okay,” she added.
It’s that desire to help others that also inspired the So You Think You Can Dance alum to write her memoir, This Far: My Story of Love, Loss, and Embracing the Light, which will be published on February 4.
“I’ve been so fortunate to have resources that have helped me that I’ve now teamed up with,” she explained. “I’ve learned there’s so many other resources that a lot of people don’t know about. I’ve had so many people reach out to me needing to talk, and if I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned that mental health can impact anyone at any time of their life.
“People that have a lot of light, they still have gone through a lot of dark. And that’s okay because you can’t have one without the other,” she concluded.