A superhero streaking across the sky. For almost 10 years, Christopher Reeve embodied Superman, the mythic American champion of justice. An actor so gifted, it's no surprise that in real life, there was nothing he couldn't do. He was an airplane pilot, an expert sailor, a diver, ice hockey, soccer. And by the way, he was also a Juilliard-trained pianist who would lead the family singalongs. That's little Will at the piano. Will, Alexander, and Matthew remembering those happy days, even if they weren't exactly the Von Trapps. Okay, now I'm going to play the Von Trapps. The Bontraps. The Bontraps.

What did you play the bassoon? Why?

The happy days that always seem endless until the day that changes everything. Almost 30 years ago, 42-year-old Christopher Reeve, a champion horseback rider, had an accident that was at once freakishly random and catastrophic. He was wearing a helmet. It was just a three-foot jump. But the horse balked, and all 200 pounds of Reeve's body his bellyweight, landed on his neck. When he spoke of it with Barbara Walters, he was now paralyzed from the neck down and on a ventilator.

I went forward. I had the great misfortune to get my hand stuck in the horse's bridal. It's like going over with your hands tied, and that's why I landed straight on my head.

It is his wife, Dana, who will pull him out of his despair. And then she said, The words save my life. You're still you, and I love you. In the new documentary, Superman, it is also Dana, who will prepare their two-year-old son, Will, and her 11 and 15-year-old stepchildren for the moment they walk in to the machines, the tubes, and a dad so radically changed.

Dana walked us down and she said, It's going to look really scary, but he's still there. Just talk to him. Ignore everything else. Just talk to him. And so I remember, and she said, You can hold his hand. And it has machines on it, and you're still reaching and holding his fingers.

As far as I remember, my first words were just, I love you.

We're here. I think in an effort to make sure that I wasn't terrified of my dad permanently. My mom made sure that I was involved as was reasonable, and that included always being near him and touching him and helping.

Oh, good. That's great. Well, thanks. When they get home from the hospital, their injured father, their valiant mother, began teaching how a wounded family can still be a family. I hear you all saying, Don't let anyone tell you what family is.

Absolutely. No matter the contours of a family, no matter how scraggly the branches on the family tree might be, as long as it's rooted in love, it doesn't matter what family looks like as long as it's yours.

Somehow, their mother and dad create the happy routines every child loves.

Whether it was good news, bad news, scary news, dinner was family time. How was school? They sat at the head next to each other. My mom would feed him and herself. We had friends dropping by. It was a very happy, robust, loud, everything you would want from a family dinner. That was every night. The one thing you weren't allowed to talk about was specific medical stuff. It could be anything else.

Like all kids, they search for ways to make dad laugh.

Matthew, at one point in college, came back with a gift to dad, and it was an eject button to put on the hand of his wheelchair right by his finger. And dad loved that. My God, someone's there in a serious meeting with Christopher Reeve, and they suddenly look at his wheelchair, and they're just seeing this eject button, and you see a register on their face, to ask, to not ask. What do we do? The house was always full of music.

She was always just I'm listening to a song. It was one of the things I miss most, for sure. Dana Reeve was a professional singer. It's how she met their dad, Christopher.

Mom was always singing, always, while she's making me my after-school snack, while she's taking me up to bed, whatever. She was always singing. And I, being 10, 11 years old, Mom, stop. It's so annoying. I'm trying to watch the show. No. Or like, Why are you singing? My friend's mom's don't sing all the time. Just being 11, right? She would be like, Oh, okay. Sorry. Or she would ratchet up the volume to needle me. Hindsight is 2020, but I wish that I had asked her to sing more because when I think about her, that's where I go. The The moments were just the quiet moments of safety and happiness and normal and togetherness. We didn't even have to be in the same room, but I knew where she was. I missed that.

The lasting memory of a mother's comforting lullaby, This Pretty Planet. This pretty planet, spinning through space. You're a garden, you're a harbor, you're a holy place. Go ♪ Cold and sun going down, gentle blue giant spin us around all through the night. Safe till the In the morning light. Only later would her son read his mother's diaries and learn the magnitude of the loss she endured privately every day.

I found this in one of her journals. I've 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 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. That's what she was enduring. That's what she had lost when my dad got hurt.

Nightline, Superman, the life and legacy of Christopher Reeve, we'll be right back.