For Rebecca Gayheart and her two daughters, Father’s Day carried a very different meaning this year.

Instead of celebrating Eric Dane with him, the family marked the holiday by looking back at photographs from happier years — images of the actor holding his daughters when they were small, standing beside them as they grew and sharing the ordinary family moments that have taken on new significance since his death.

On June 21, Gayheart and the couple’s eldest daughter, 16-year-old Billie, turned to social media to remember Dane on the family’s first Father’s Day without him.

The tributes offered a deeply personal glimpse into the grief being experienced by the actor’s daughters, Billie and 14-year-old Georgia, as they move through a series of milestones without their father.

Gayheart, 54, shared a photograph of Dane with his girls and reflected on the difficulty of watching her daughters experience the holiday.

“I hurt for my girls today,” she wrote, describing Father’s Day as one of the many difficult “firsts” still ahead for the family.

She also expressed her belief that Dane continues to watch over Billie and Georgia.

For Billie, the memories were even more personal.

The teenager posted several photographs from her childhood showing her with her father years before illness reshaped the family’s life. In one image, Billie appeared as a young girl standing beside Dane and holding onto him. Another showed her at an even younger age as her father held her close.

Her message focused on how constant that absence has become.

“Not one date goes by where I don’t miss you,” Billie wrote, adding that her love for her father was greater than she could put into words.

The photographs captured something simple but powerful: a daughter remembering not the television star known to millions of viewers, but the father who once held her in his arms.

A Family Facing Life After Loss

Dane, widely known for his roles in “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Euphoria,” died at age 53, 10 months after revealing that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

His illness placed Gayheart in an especially important position during the final period of his life.

The couple married in 2003 and later welcomed their two daughters. Although Gayheart and Dane separated in 2018, their relationship took another turn years later.

In March 2025, Gayheart dismissed the divorce petition she had previously filed. During Dane’s battle with ALS, she remained closely involved in his care and continued supporting their family.

After his death, Gayheart described the loss as something she and her daughters were still struggling to fully comprehend.

About a month after Dane died, she spoke publicly about the enormous amount of support the family had received from people around them.

She said the family remained in shock and thanked those who had shown them kindness during what she described as an intensely challenging period.

The response from friends and colleagues in the entertainment world had been so significant, she explained, that it was sometimes difficult to take in.

Gayheart said people had been helping carry both her and the girls through the earliest days of grief, and she believed that support would continue well beyond the immediate aftermath.

Her comments reflected the complicated position she had suddenly found herself in: grieving someone with whom she had shared decades of her life while also helping two teenage daughters adjust to the permanent loss of their father.

Remembering Eric Through Family Photographs

Photographs have become an important part of how Gayheart has publicly remembered Dane.

Just before the one-month anniversary of his death, she posted a collection of images documenting different stages of their lives together.

The montage included photographs of Gayheart and Dane as a couple, pictures of Billie and Georgia when they were babies and family moments that had rarely been seen publicly.

Some of the images connected Dane’s private family life with the professional world in which he spent much of his career. Among them were photographs featuring people who had been part of his acting life and longtime social circle.

But the central message of the tribute came from the family itself.

Gayheart signed the post with a short message expressing enduring love from “your girls,” emphasizing the bond that remained between Dane and the three women closest to him.

Months later, the Father’s Day posts continued that pattern.

Rather than focusing heavily on his career or celebrity status, Gayheart and Billie chose images centered on Dane as a parent.

They showed a father standing beside his daughters and holding them when they were little — intimate family moments that now serve as reminders of the years they shared.

The Difficult “Firsts” After Losing a Parent

Gayheart’s description of Father’s Day as a “first” carried particular weight.

For families dealing with a recent loss, holidays can create painful markers in the calendar. Birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations that once felt familiar suddenly become reminders of who is no longer physically present.

For Billie and Georgia, Father’s Day was one of those moments.

The girls were already navigating their teenage years when Dane’s illness dramatically changed their family life. Now they are moving forward without him during a period filled with milestones that parents would normally be expected to witness.

Gayheart’s message suggested that she is acutely aware of that reality.

Her words were less about her own grief than about what she was seeing in her daughters.

“I hurt for my girls today,” she wrote.

It was a brief statement, but one that captured the perspective of a mother watching her children face a loss she cannot fix for them.

Billie’s tribute showed another side of that grief.

Rather than writing at length about her father’s illness or final months, she returned to childhood photographs.

The images reached back to a time when she was small enough to be held in her father’s arms — years before ALS entered the family’s story.

Her accompanying message made clear that the loss was present far beyond holidays.

She missed him every day.

Love That Continues Beyond the Holiday

Dane’s death changed the structure of a family that had already experienced years of transition.

Gayheart and Dane had separated long before his illness became public, yet the relationship they built over more than two decades remained connected through Billie and Georgia.

As his health declined, those connections became especially important.

Following his death, Gayheart repeatedly emphasized the support surrounding their daughters and the gratitude she felt toward those helping them endure an extraordinarily difficult period.

Father’s Day became another public glimpse into that process.

There was no elaborate tribute or lengthy explanation from Billie. Instead, she chose childhood photographs and a few lines telling her father how deeply she still loved and missed him.

Gayheart did something similar, sharing a memory while acknowledging that the holiday was only the beginning of many milestones the girls will experience without their dad.

The family’s posts ultimately centered on something larger than a single holiday.

For Billie and Georgia, Eric Dane remains part of their lives through photographs, memories and the relationship they had with him long before illness changed everything.

And as their mother suggested in her Father’s Day message, the difficult firsts will continue.

So will the memories.