Christopher Reeves' children reveal the first words they said to him after the accident

Christopher Reeve's children remember the first time they spoke to their father after his life-changing horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed.

Matthew Reeve, Alexandra Reeve Givens and Will Reeve spoke to Diane Sawyer about their late father ahead of the release of the documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story To Good morning America Monday, September 16th.

Alexandra, 40, recalled how her stepmother Dana Reeve informed the children before taking them to Christopher. She explained that she “went downstairs with us and said, 'It's going to look really scary, but he's still there. Just talk to him. Ignore everything else. Just talk to him.'”

“She said, 'You can hold his hand.' And there are machines on it, you know, and you reach out and hold his fingers,” she continued.

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“As far as I remember, my first words were just, 'I love you. We're here,'” added Matthew, now 44.

Will, 32, was barely three years old when his father was thrown from his horse and landed on his head during a horse riding competition on May 27, 1995. He suffered a severe spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the neck down.

As Will said on Monday on GMBH, “I think to make sure I wasn't constantly afraid of my father, my mother made sure I was included to an appropriate extent.”

“That included always being close to him, touching him and helping him lift his legs to help him stretch, which is important for someone with a spinal cord injury,” the ABC News correspondent explained.

Superman Caption: Christopher died in 2004 at the age of 52 and his wife Dana died 17 months later at the age of 44 from a diagnosis of lung cancer.

Speaking about losing both his parents at such a young age, Will told PEOPLE that he has received an extraordinary amount of support from his family and friends.

“I moved in with our beloved neighbors, who were our best friends,” he explained of what happened next. “And it was such an unlikely, amazing experience for almost 20 years.”

Will went on to say that “everyone was there” to help him, calling it a “situation where everyone had to pitch in,” including his “maternal grandparents, Charles and Helen Morini,” who “were incredibly indispensable.”

“We were lucky to live in a close-knit community,” he said. “We had large groups of friends, teachers and coaches and people from the past and present who always helped out where they could.”

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story will be shown in selected cinemas on September 21st and 25th.