John Schneider Reveals ‘Lie I Had to Tell’ Late Wife Alicia in His Last Words to Her

John Schneider has revealed the “lie” he “had to tell” his late wife Alicia Allain Schneider, in his last words to her. Speaking to PEOPLE about his final moments with Alicia, the actor confessed, “I of course told her it was OK. ‘If you’re tired, if you want to go see your grandma, you want to go see your grandpa, if you want to go, then it’s OK. You go.’ And that was all the truth,” he said, recalling their emotional goodbye after her battle with cancer.

Schneider then admitted, “But then I lied, because I said, ‘Don’t worry about me; I’ll be OK.’” Tearing up, the actor added, “That was a lie I had to tell, but she knew it. OK is a long way away… The last thing I said to her was, ‘I love you desperately, and I’ve got multiple sets of very long-term plans for you.’ And that’s true, because eternity’s a very long time, and I believe it. I’m counting on it.”

According to PEOPLE, Alicia was first diagnosed with cancer in 2019. She and Schneider married the same year, following his divorce from Elvira “Elly” Castle. In 2020, she went into remission, but in 2021 doctors discovered that her cancer had returned. After fighting cancer again for over a year, Alicia went home and passed away under hospice care.

Schneider later shared that, while he was with Alicia through her cancer battle, he was not present when she died, but he believes she wanted it that way. “The thing that helped me most in the grieving process was I’m quite sure that she waited for me not to be there, because I think she knew I couldn’t handle it,” he said. “Her mom and her dad were there, her daughter [Jessica Dollard] was there, her daughter’s fiancé [Daniel Turner] (now husband) was there, and I think she waited for me to be gone.”

“I’m grateful for that, and then part of the pull-pull thing [of grief] is not wanting to admit that it happened,” he continued. “I still wake up in the morning, and I reach for her in groggy sleep. I keep my eyes closed, and I reach over, hoping maybe this was a dream. I’m a creative person. I have some very vivid dreams; maybe this is one of them.”

Finally, Schneider said of the heartbreaking experience, “As bad as I hurt, I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. Heaven is real, and I’ll get there one day and she’ll greet me. At that point, this will seem like nothing. like no time has gone by. Until then, I will endure. That’s what she’d want, and I’m going to live the rest of my life doing only that which would make her smile.” He then added, “I’m going to ‘go do,’ as she said, even when I don’t want to, so that when I get there, she’ll be delighted with me.”