Amanda Kloots is still coming to terms with her new reality following the death of her husband, actor Nick Cordero, on July 5. Kloots took to Instagram on Wednesday to share a heartbreaking message about her loss.
"Every day as I process this loss more and more I realize that new things that are hitting me on a daily basis," Kloots wrote, alongside a photo of herself, her late husband, and their infant son, Elvis, taken before Cordero's hospitalization back in March as he battled COVID-19.
"Today it was that I lost our family," she continued. "I lost my husband. Elvis lost his father, but today I realized we lost our family. We didn’t really even get to be a family."
Kloots said that she realized that they will never be able to "have those memories that I dreamed of since Elvis was born."
"This hit me hard. It stung like a horrible bug bite actually. The pain of everything has recently begun to stop me in my tracks," Kloots shared. "I’ll be doing something and I freeze, unable to think or move. My gut aches, it actually aches deeper than I ever knew it could."
Kloots went on to explain that the reason she was sharing these realizations was to show solidarity with the many other people around the world who are suffering the same emotional pain.
"If anyone else can relate, know that I’m here with you," she wrote. "If anyone else feels this pain, you are not alone."
"Grieving is a journey we all do differently. Talking about it when I have the strength is helping me," Kloots concluded. "I don’t always have the strength, sometimes I can’t talk at all. There are no answers. There is no right or wrong. I can only allow myself the time and the process and be honest with that."
The candid and deeply personal post comes just a few days after Kloots shared a video of their 1-year-old son saying his first words.
In the video, Kloots asks her little boy, Elvis, to point to a photo of his father. Elvis leans over to give the photo a kiss, and when Kloots asks, "Where's dada?" a second time, Elvis quietly and excitedly says, "Right there," before accidentally and adorably pulling the photo off the table.
"He hasn’t seen Nick since March 30th," she wrote, referring to when Cordero was first admitted into the hospital. "The fact that he still knows who his dada is, point to him and give him a kiss to me is amazing."
Shortly after that post, Kloots shared another of their adorable son standing outside in their yard wearing a pair of swim trunks and a floppy sun hat.
"Nick would always say, 'Babes, look at our boy. We are so blessed.' I couldn’t agree more. 💙" Kloots captioned the snapshot.
During Cordero's battle with the coronavirus, and the subsequent complications that arose, Kloots kept fans informed with frequent health updates.
During that time, she also shared many of her son's milestones, including his first steps and his first birthday, which his father was tragically unable to witness while in ICU, before his eventual passing.
Shortly after Cordero's death, Kloots revealed that Elvis had picked up the habit of kissing her phone whenever she was looking at photos of her late husband.
"I was showing Elvis videos of Nick, and this one video was Nick talking, like leaving a voicemail message for a friend, but he had it saved on his phone,” she said. “And Elvis saw it and smiled and -- I'm not even kidding you -- leans into the phone to give his dad a kiss, and then kept going.”
"I kept playing the video again and he kept trying to press the button, and he just kept going in and out, kissing the phone and kissing his dad,” Kloots continued. “My heart, of course, just melted. But in a way, it just made me feel so good because it made me feel like he recognizes Nick. He knows who he is and he recognizes his dad, even though it's been over three months."
See the video below to hear more.
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