On 11 February, it was confirmed by his family that James Van Der Beek had passed away peacefully.
Tributes flooded in for the Dawson’s Creek actor as his friends shared intimate images of his ‘final days’ as he shared moments with them and his family.
And yesterday (8 March), the late star’s nine-year-old daughter, Emilia, shared an emotional video to mark what would have been his 49th birthday.
Van Der Beek shared his daughter and five other children with his wife Kimberly, who he married in 2010.
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In the clip, Emilia says she ‘talks to my dad’ every day as she spoke about dealing with losing a loved one.
The father’s death came just after a year he made his diagnosis with stage three colorectal cancer public.
In the statement announcing the sad news last month, the family said Van Der Beek ‘met his final days with courage, faith, and grace’.
And it seems that same inspiring attitude has been passed on to his daughter as Kimberly shared the moving video to Instagram.
“I’m just going to tell you little tips, or anything that helps you getting through anyone you love’s passing,” Emilia says.
Recorded by herself, the nine-year-old begins: “So today is my dad's birthday, and the number one thing for somebody's passing is to talk to them and let your emotions out.
“If you miss them, you can cry, you can talk to them. I talk to my dad every day. And I start with a sentence, and I say, 'Hi, Dad. I miss you and I love you so much, and I'll never stop loving you.'"
Emilia says she tells her dad about her day and how she’s feeling, as she does to her family.
“You just have to feel them in your heart,” she continues. “Because they’re in your heart, they’re watching over you. They’re a part of your body and in a good place.”
Emilia knows her dad’s ‘in a good place’ and is ‘not in pain anymore’.
“He’s in heaven,” she adds. “Above the clouds with God and the Lord.”
The actor’s daughter says people should ‘just cry’ to let it out and ‘be happy’ that their loved one is ‘in a good place’ but also to ‘be sad because you miss them’.
“You can be angry, but don’t blame yourself,” she says. “Blaming yourself, it’s not a good strategy for someone’s passing.”
Emilia believes ‘everything is meant to happen for a reason’ and shared something her dad told her.
“If this doesn’t work out the way he wanted it to, and in the way we wanted it to, for him living, I still have to believe in miracles,” she explains.
“Miracles can still happen, just later on in life, and they’ll keep coming. But maybe when you want them to come, they might not.”
And she says that if a loved one does pass then to remember ‘they have some work to do on the other side’.
To help deal with her dad’s death, Emilia says she has stolen items of his, like his hat, and continues to ‘praise’ him.
Jess Battison