Five Months Later: Dawson's Creek Cast Honors James Van Der Beek on Father's Day

Grief doesn’t follow a calendar, but it marks time through moments—and this Father’s Day weekend carried the weight of one that Mary-Margaret Humes couldn’t let pass quietly.

The actress who played Dawson’s TV mom took to Instagram on Saturday, June 19, to share a throwback Dawson’s Creek poster alongside a Father’s Day tribute. But this wasn’t a generic holiday greeting. Just five months after James Van Der Beek’s death in February following a battle with stage III colorectal cancer, Humes, 72, found herself honoring a man she’d worked alongside for six seasons (1998–2003) and called a lifelong friend. Her message was simple but pointed: give big meaningful hugs and tell the people you love that you love them. A shout-out to simpler times with @vanderjames and John Wesley Shipp, the actor who played Dawson’s other TV parent.

Van Der Beek was 48 when he died. He left behind his wife, Kimberly Van Der Beek, and their six children—a family that’s continued to receive an outpouring of support from the show’s cast, including Michelle Williams, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, and Busy Philipps. When Kimberly marked three months since his death in May, she wrote about how“the comforts of shock have worn off”and the reality of his absence was settling in. Yet she also described feeling him differently now, more deeply, and spoke of the“magic in the air”that their loved ones had created through their support.

Humes’Father’s Day post wasn’t just about remembrance—it was about a lesson. She urged people to live intentionally, to hold the people they care about close, and to say the things that matter out loud. That’s a message that hits different when you’ve lost someone. Van Der Beek fought his battle with quiet strength and dignity, according to those who knew him. Humes had called their last conversations, just days before his death,“merely a few days ago”and said they were“forever sitting softly in my heart for safe keeping.”

In a year when grief has reshaped the Dawson’s Creek family, moments like these—a Father’s Day tribute, a birthday tradition continued with his kids, a continued thread of connection—become anchors. They’re not about moving on. They’re about carrying forward.