Weeks after his wife’s death, Duane Chapman, star of the hit A&E series “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” said he’s not suicidal, but is ready to join his late spouse whenever the time comes.
Chapman, in an emotional interview with Entertainment Tonight, said he’s not sure how he’s doing because “in a new experience you have, you don’t know how you’re doing, because you’ve never experienced it.”
Tearfully, the reality television star said he’s still processing all that has happened since his wife Beth’s passing last month. Beth was very open about her Christianity, describing her years-long battle with cancer, which ultimately claimed her life, as the “ultimate test of faith.”
Chapman revealed to his interviewer, Kevin Frazier, that he often puts pillows under the blankets next to him so that, if he wakes up in the middle of the night, even for just a moment, he forgets his wife is gone.
Beth’s death has clarified for Chapman that he wants his own passing to be swift and he wants the last words he hears to be those of Genesis 1:1, which reads, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
“Psychiatrists say, and the Bible says it, too, ‘time heals wounds,’” Chapman told Frazier. “After I’ve seen how she went slow, I said, ‘Lord, I’ve figured it out; I want to go fast, but you got to let someone at least read Genesis 1:1 to me.’”
“All my staff has been advised, if something happens to me, I wanna hear Genesis 1:1, so that I know that means to say, ‘Lord forgive me,’” Chapman added, noting he wants to be certain he is right with God before he dies, given his career as a bounty hunter often inspires vulgarity.
Chapman also said Beth never allowed the cancer to have a foothold in her life. The reality TV personality said his late wife often quoted Proverbs 18:21, which declares, “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”
What else?
At a memorial service in Aurora, Colorado, last week, Chapman delivered a heartrending, 27-minute eulogy for Beth, whom he described as “our lion tamer,” according to Access Hollywood.
“I cannot believe that she’s gone,” he told those gathered at the memorial in the couple’s hometown. “This is not possible. I want to wake up from a dream. In the ’70s, I did 18 months in a Texas penitentiary, and I told God yesterday, ‘I’d do five years, 10 years — day for day — just to kiss her again.’ I’ve never felt like this.”