Will Reeve shares his experience of feeling isolated following the deaths of Christopher and Dana Reeve | Family & Relationships

While most of the world knew Christopher Reeve as Superman, to his three kids — Matthew, Alexandra and Will Reeve — he was merely their beloved dad, one who was gone from them far too quickly.

The three siblings watched firsthand as their father went from film star to pioneering activist for spinal cord injury research after a near-fatal horse using accident in 1995 left him paralyzed from the neck down at the age of 42.

Then, in 2004, Christopher Reeve died unexpectedly as a result of coronary heart failure.

In addition to his kids, by the actor’s facet from his accident to his demise was his beloved spouse Dana Reeve, mother to Will Reeve and stepmom to Matthew Reeve and Alexandra Reeve.

Less than one yr after delivering a eulogy at her husband's funeral, Dana Reeve, a non-smoker her whole, was identified with Stage 4 lung most cancers.

She died seven months afterward March 6, 2006, at the age of 44.

“Despite the love and security that my siblings provided me, and my family provided me, and my adoptive family provides me, that was the moment, March 6, 2006 … I've been alone since then,” Will Reeve, who was 13 when he misplaced his mom, mentioned In a brand new documentary, “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” that explores the actor’s life,

Prior to her death, Dana Reeve made sure Will Reeve was taken care of, arranging for him to live with the family of his best friend.

His older siblings also dropped everything to help him. Alexandra Reeve was a law student at the time and Matthew Reeve a producer.

In their conversation with ABC News' Diane Sawyer, Will Reeve, now an ABC News correspondent, posed a question to his siblings that he had never before asked them — did people worry enough about them after their father and Dana Reeve died.

“I do not assume I've ever considered that both, like, that wasn't the job at hand,” Alexandra Reeve replied. “The job at hand was retaining issues going, retaining us OK, retaining everybody OK, honoring them in the proper approach, setting you up for achievement.”

Speaking to his brother, Matthew Reeve added, “I believe our biggest focus and body of thoughts was you.”

In “Super/Man,” Will Reeve said it was only after his mother's death that he read her journals and fully understood the difficulties she faced as a caregiver for her husband and family.

“I have been studying the difference between solitude and loneliness. Telling the story of my life to the clean white towels taken warm from the dryer and held to my chest. A sad substitute for a body pulled in close. I think of him in certain lights. Dawn, late afternoon, bright windy days that would be perfect for sailing,” Will Reeve reads from his mom’s journal in “Super/Man.” “I miss most even now his hands. The expressive grace and heft of them. The heat of his hands on my skin. The wrap of his arms, two becoming one. I carry the stack of towels upstairs carefully cradling them so as not to let them tumble. Save one still damp, the top one I had pressed against my face, which needs more time for drying.”

‘I love you. We're here.'

All three siblings credit Dana Reeve with successfully guiding them through the “new normal” they experienced after Christopher Reeve’s accident.

“I believe irrespective of the contours of a household, irrespective of how scraggly the branches on the household tree is likely to be, so long as it is rooted in love, it does not matter what your loved ones appears to be like like so long as it is yours,” Will Reeve said of his family's endurance through tragedy.

Will Reeve was just 2 years old at the time of his dad's horse riding accident. His half-siblings, Alexandra Reeve and Matthew Reeve, were 11 years old and 15 years old, respectively, at the time.

The siblings bear in mind the first moments seeing their father after the accident.

“Dana walked us down and she mentioned, ‘It's gonna look actually scary, however he is nonetheless there. Just speak to him. Ignore every part else. Just speak to him,'” Alexandra Reeve recalled, adding, “She mentioned, ‘You can maintain his hand.' And it has machines on it, you realize, and you are reaching and holding his fingers.”

Alexandra Reeve remembers holding her dad's hand amid all the machines working to keep him alive.

Matthew Reeve recalled that when he first saw his dad after the accident, he told him simply, “I like you. We're right here.”

“I believe in an effort to be sure that I wasn't terrified of my dad completely, my mother [Dana Reeve] made certain that I used to be concerned as was cheap,” Will Reeve added. “And that included all the time being close to him and touching him and serving to elevate his legs to vary him, which is necessary for somebody with a spinal twine damage.”

When Christopher Reeve came from the hospital, the siblings said they learned by observing Christopher and Dana Reeve that life would go on, and while life was different, the family love was the same.

“There have been days the place he was getting main setbacks, devastating medical information, you realize, or adjustments on a coverage battle that he was combating and he'd misplaced that battle, and he would allow us to see the hope and the disappointment and say, ‘Today's a very arduous day,' and then he would say, ‘And we're gonna go get dinner collectively,' or, ‘Let's go watch a film,'” Alexandra Reeve recalled. “He would allow us to see him take that journey again up.”

Like other kids, growing up, the siblings said they found ways to make their dad laugh.

“Matthew at one level in faculty got here again with a present to dad, and it was an eject button to placed on the hand of his wheelchair, proper by his finger, and Dad liked that,” Alexandra Reeve recalled. “Someone's there in a critical assembly with Christopher Reeve, and they instantly have a look at his wheelchair. They're simply seeing this eject button, and you variety of see it register on their face, like, ‘To ask? To not ask? What will we do?'”

Will Reeve mentioned his recollections are of a “completely happy” and “loud” house full of household dinners and pleasure.

“Whether it was excellent news, unhealthy information, scary information, dinner was household time,” Will Reeve said. “My mother would prepare dinner, [and mom and dad] sat at the head, subsequent to one another. My mother would feed him and herself.”

He continued, “We had buddies dropping by. It was a really completely happy, strong, loud, every part you'd need from a household dinner, and that was each night time. And the one factor you were not allowed to speak about was particular medical stuff. Could be anything.”

Matthew Reeve recalled a home “full of music,” thanks to Dana Reeve, who was a professional singer when she met her future husband at age 25.

“She was all the time simply bursting into track, and it was one of the issues I miss most for certain,” Matthew Reeve mentioned.

Also reflecting on how his mother was “all the time singing,” Will Reeve added, “Hindsight is 20/20, however I want that I had requested her to sing extra, as a result of once I take into consideration her, that is the place I am going … the quiet moments of security and happiness and normalcy and togetherness. We did not even need to be in the similar room, however I knew the place she was. I miss that.”

Today, Will Reeve said he frequently sings to his siblings' children the same lullaby his mom always sang to him as a child, saying, “I bear in mind the phrases. How might you not.”

“There's a common story in right here, and it isn't a few well-known particular person in a cape and tights. It's a few household,” Reeve said of his family's story, told in “Super/Man.” “It's a human story. We had human mother and father who did superhuman issues.”

In the decade after his accident, Christopher Reeve not only inspired his family but millions of people around the world as an activist and advocate for spinal cord injury research, launching the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation with his wife.

The basis has since invested greater than $140 million thus far in analysis investments, according to its web site.

“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It is set for a limited theatrical release in U.S. theaters Sept. 21 and 25, with tickets available via Fathom Events.

ABC News' Carson Blackwelder contributed to this report.