It’s been nearly two years since The Cars’ frontman Ric Ocasek passed away at the age of 75, but Paulina Porizkova, his wife of 35 years, says she still thinks of him “every day.”

In an emotional new interview, Porizkova opened up about the “nightmare” moment that she found Ocasek dead in their home in September of 2019. On the morning of September 15, Porizkova went up to their bedroom to bring Ocasek some coffee.

I thought he was sleeping kind of late,” she recalled, according told Yahoo Life. “I walked in and he looked like he was sleeping — until I set the coffee cup down and I could tell from his face that wasn’t sleeping, though he looked very peaceful. And there was a certain amount of foreboding as I walked into the room; there was some sort of knowledge of what I was about to find.”

Ocasek had been recovering from an undisclosed surgery at the time of his death, and he ended up passing away overnight of high blood pressure and heart disease.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, they never show this part in movies’ — like one of the insane thoughts that just flitters by you,” Porizkova said. “I saw what happened. I felt his cheek while thinking, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.’”

 

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Porizkova then had the difficult task of telling their two sons Jonathan Ocasek, 27, and Oliver Ocasek, 22, that he had died.

“And in my mind, I kind of calmly walked out of the room and went downstairs and told the boys what had happened, but instead I started wailing and my legs gave out and I couldn’t walk, so I had to crawl downstairs on all fours,” she recalled. “And this is what I found to be really amazing, and in hindsight, you really don’t know how you’re going to react.”

Looking back, Porizkova sees this entire situation as a “nightmare” that she couldn’t escape.

“You’re so torn; you’re bouncing between what you’ve just seen, how your world has just come to a complete screeching stop and then how you’re reacting to it,” she explained. “All of this is going on in your brain at the same time. It’s just so much information, and then it just kind of shuts down on you.”

Over the past year and eight months, Porizkova has been open about her grieving process with fans, and she feels like this has only made her a stronger person.

“I feel like I’m in a much stronger position than I have been in a long time,” she said. “I feel like I’m getting my voice back and reclaiming who I am. My biggest hope for the future is to continue to figure out who I am on my own. I’ve been a part of a couple for so long that finding out who I am outside of a couple is really hard and really traumatic. I don’t like it, but it’s like taking cod liver oil — it’s good for me.”