Prior to the terrible passing of her star daughter on Friday, Anne Heche’s Christian psychologist mother, 85, had already outlived three of her five children and her husband.
The Six Days, Seven Nights actress, 53, passed away on August 12 after being in several vehicle accidents a week earlier.
Heche’s blue Mini Cooper first crashed into a garage at an apartment complex, then she smashed into a house, leaving her “severely burnt” and “intubated” in a hospital.
The Heche family had a history of tragedy; beginning with the early death of her sister Cynthia Heche due to a heart condition in infancy, her secretly gay patriarch Donald Heche passing away from AIDS in 1983, and Nathan Heche’s death in a car accident in New Jersey at the age of 18, it was nothing new for the Heche family.
Susan, Heche’s oldest sister, passed away at the age of 48 from a brain tumour in 2006.
Following the publication of her biography Call Me Crazy in 2001, the actress’s tumultuous connection with her family first came to light.
Anne was alienated from her mother as a consequence of her lesbian relationship with Ellen DeGeneres.
Heche revealed in the book that her father, Donald, had molested her when she was a little girl.
She also claimed that as a consequence of the assault, he gave her genital herpes.
Heche’s mother, Nancy Heche, said in reaction to her son’s autobiography: “I am trying to find a space for myself in this work, a place where I as Anne’s mother do not feel violated or scandalised.”
Heche and her elder sister Susan both stated that Donald Heche had an odd and deceitful life in their own autobiographies.
Heche’s mother and four children were left at home while he spent the evenings cruising gay clubs in his hometown of Aurora, Ohio.
By day, he was a devout Baptist choir director and openly gay man.
In her book, The Truth Comes Out, Nancy said that she and Donald experimented using amyl nitrate, more commonly referred to as poppers, to spice up their sex.
Don and I used the poppers together, she said. We were given several little bottles of the disorienting substance when we initially arrived in Atlantic City and were staying in the home with Don’s “business” partner “to improve our sex life.”
But I’m a very non-gay wife who was persuaded to snigger the poppers as a novelty for our sex life, Nancy continued.
It appeared reasonable innocent. Why would I want to doubt him?
The matriarch of the Heche family continued by claiming that she came to the conclusion that her husband and his “business partner” were both homosexuals after reading an article on poppers’ predominance in the gay community.
Donald Heche died of AIDS in 1983, barely two years after the deadly virus was discovered in a group of homosexual men, making him one of the nation’s first victims.
For the family, the drama didn’t stop there. Because of her outspoken lesbian relationship with Elle DeGeneres in the early 2000s, Anne Heche has long maintained that she was blacklisted.
It seemed as if her connection with her mother was also included in the blacklist.
Heche revealed to the Tampa Bay Times in 1998 that her mother thought her relationship with a lesbian was a “sin.”
The friendship between Nancy Heche’s daughter and Ellen DeGeneres, she said to the Christian Broadcasting Network, “feels like a breach of an unwritten vow: We would never have anything to do with homosexuals.”
Nancy said in a separate interview with AL.com in 2009 that she believed she handled her daughter’s coming out in 1997 poorly.
I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to handle it properly, she said. I was being given a chance by God.
We made some progress in our attempts to communicate. We were all becoming better at handling it.
How do you live out that when you disagree? We loved each other.
Nancy said during the interview that she supported “expressing love and respect to the homosexual community.”
Nancy was a featured speaker at other homophobic conferences around the nation the same year as the interview.
Nancy said that it was his doctor who revealed to her that her spouse was a gay. We fail, she said. We turn on one another.
It’s a tragic tale. God has a lot to teach me. Instead of acting from our woundedness, we are to act from our healing. I felt deceived and wounded.
She also played down any conflict between her and her daughter, claiming that their relationship was “typical” of a mother and a daughter.
We connect and we don’t connect, she remarked. That is rather standard. I love her and we are developing a close friendship. I cherish her.
Heche said that after a 20-year conflict, she had just lately started to mend fences with her sister in a 2011 interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The “I Know What You Did Last Summer” actor said: “We’re having a good time in our friendship as we’ve become closer. She came out to visit last week. Both of us have left our belongings behind.
Heche stated in that interview that she and her mother were still at odds.
Heche said that when her mother responded, “Jesus loves you, Anne,” she hung up when she phoned her to confront her.
Forgiveness is an odd term to me, Heche said. I don’t mind that my mother doesn’t participate in my life the way I want her to, as long as she’s living the way she wants to.
Nancy Heche acknowledged: “[Anne has] ceased communicating to me” in 2015. She decided to break off contact.
Heche told the Los Angeles Times that she was able to accept the fact that her mother didn’t love her as a result of her portrayal as an abusive alcoholic mother in the 2004 television film “Gracie’s Choice,” in which she also starred.