Nancy Heche is now survived by four of her five children – except her openly gay husband, Donald, who died of AIDS in 1983. She admitted in her religious-heavy 2006 memoir, “The Truth Comes Out: When Someone You Love is in a Same-Sex Relationship,” that she used sodium nitrate poppers with Donald to improve their sex life and took married lovers. Anne died on Friday, a week after she drove her blue Mini Cooper at high speed down an LA street and plowed into a small house, setting her car on fire along with it. Before Anne was born, her sister Cynthia, just 2 months old at the time, died of a heart defect. Anne’s 18-year-old brother Nathan died in a car accident three months after Don Heche’s death. Another sister, Susan Bergman, who wrote her own family memoir, “Anonymity,” died in 2006 of brain cancer. Only one Heche sibling, Abigail, is still living. Nancy Heche speaks about sexual orientation at USM’s Masterton Hall in 2005. Jack Milton/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images Abigail, left, shown here with Anne and Nancy, is the only surviving child. nancyheche/InstagramAnne died a week after she drove her blue Mini Cooper into a small house in Los Angeles, setting both the car and the house on fire.gofundme Chicago-based Nancy Heche, who is a Christian psychologist who uses the Bible in her counseling practice, was initially furious when Anne told her in 1997 that she had fallen in love with Ellen DeGeneres. “I have fallen into disbelief and rage,” he wrote. “I’m stunned, in a state of shock. Doesn’t Anna know what homosexuality has done to our family?’ “How can we ever close the gap, the openly gay mother and the openly gay daughter?” she added. Anne told her mother in 1997 that she had fallen in love with actress Ellen DeGeneres.NBCUniversal via Getty Images Anne said Nancy did not believe her claims that her father abused her from the time she was little until she was 12.SGranitz/ WireImage) After the publication of Heche’s 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, Nancy Heche wrote that she “found no place among the lies and blasphemies within the pages of this book.” Anne Heche said her mother did not believe Anne’s claims that her father abused her from the time she was little until she was 12. Her daughter’s revelations about her relationship with DeGeneres brought back painful memories for Nancy, who said she didn’t know her husband was gay until he was dying at Bellevue Hospital in 1983 and a doctor told her he had AIDS. She wrote that she never knew about her husband’s double life because she was a “50s girl” who “grew up on Donna Reed, Leave it to Beaver and Doris Day.” When Heche learned of her husband’s AIDS diagnosis, it suddenly “clicked,” she wrote. “The dots connect like a stick of dynamite – the fuse screeching towards detonation. I realize I’ve been lied to all my married life.”
