Saturday’s public service for Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds was more than a memorial honoring two of the finest women in showbiz. It was a show celebrating their life.
Organized by Todd Fisher, the Forest Lawn Cemetery event welcomed more than 1,200 guests, and was streamed online for those who could not attend. As you can imagine, it was as joyous and theatrical event as you’d expect for two Hollywood icons, along with some personal moments of reflection.
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But one guest in particular who attended the service shared a piece of his broken heart.
Dan Aykroyd attended the service and paid an emotional tribute to his former fiancée and her mother inside the Freedom Theater.
Proposing to her on the set of their 1980 film, The Blues Brothers, Aykroyd took the stage sharing he could have saved her because he had saved her once before, adding, “We shouldn’t be here so soon in our lives.”
“I once saved her life, applying the Heimlich [maneuver] to dislodge a Brussels sprout from her throat,” he joked, before fighting back tears about Fisher’s death. “If I’d been with our beloved showboat, I might have been able to save her again.”
The 64-year-old Ghostbusters star went on to describe his relationship with Fisher throughout their lives, even mentioning how they were quite serious about each other at one point, saying, “[we] had taken blood tests in anticipation of maybe having a child.”
Sharing what he thought their children would have been like, Aykroyd said they would be, “funny, quick, spiritual, haunted, pursued, talented, acerbic….deviant, manic genius.”
While the two eventually went their separate ways, they kept in touch even when she was attempting to reconcile with singer-songwriter, Paul Simon.
“So here I found myself attempting to reconcile with a woman returning to a former intimate, and may I say, a much better choice, but a woman who confided deeply in me and who valued my counsel throughout the process of her inevitable decision to in fact, not marry me — and wed another,” he recalled.
Aykroyd says one of his greatest rewards for his “unwavering support” was “the time I had with her as a trusted friend and fellow night hawk.”
The touching memorial wasn’t the first time Aykroyd paid tribute to Fisher. In January, he shared an emotional essay honoring the iconic actress
Saturday’s memorial wasn’t the first time to Fisher. In January, he wrote a touching essay in Empire honoring the iconic actress and revealing how he hoped “she kept my ring” after they ended their engagement.
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This article originally appeared on Womanista.com
