Ryan Dorsey Says Son Josey’s Eyes Were ‘Welling Up’ as He Watched Mom Naya Rivera in the Glee Concert Movie (Exclusive)

Late star Naya Rivera’s now 9-year-old son Josey recently had a special moment watching his mom in 2011’s Glee: The 3D Concert Movie.

“He sat there and he watched the whole movie, and you could see his eyes welling up a little bit,” Rivera’s ex-husband and Josey’s dad Ryan Dorsey tells PEOPLE. “But he’s a strong boy, and he has a lot of content and episodes. His mom will live forever. I think that’s a silver lining of this terrible situation.”

Since Rivera drowned at 33 on July 8, 2020, while she was swimming with Josey, then 4, off a rental boat in Lake Piru in Ventura County, Calif., Dorsey, 41, says he’s struggled himself to watch Rivera on TV.

“Pictures are hard enough,” says the actor. “I can’t just sit there and watch her sing. It’s hard for me.”

While this summer will mark five years since Rivera’s death, Dorsey says the reminders are still everywhere.

“So many songs make me think about her, like Amy Winehouse’s ‘Valerie,’ which she sang on Glee, and ‘Sunflower’ by [Post Malone and Swae Lee] because I always used to get her sunflowers on Sundays,” he says. “I can just see Josey in the back seat bobbing his head and singing that song.”

“Sometimes they’re happy reminders but a lot of times, even if it’s happy, the reality is it’s a lot of what could’ve been, what should’ve been,” he continues. “A lot of second-guessing everything and wondering how things might’ve played out if the tiniest decision we make really changes the course of events of life.”

Since Rivera’s death, Dorsey has been feeling the weight of juggling fatherhood and his career, especially as Josey has started asking questions he can’t answer.

“We made this book of memories for Josey that sits by his bed, and during the holidays he was crying looking at it,” Dorsey says. “You can only give him a hug and tell him, ‘I know, life is not fair. Bad things happen and there’s no reason for it, and you just have to do your best to be a good person.’ It’s hard trying to explain things that you can’t really make sense of no matter what age you are.”

Though Dorsey now lives with Josey in his home state of West Virginia, he often travels back to L.A. to visit Rivera’s family and for work (he’s currently appearing in the CBS hit Tracker and filmed a “very cool” Apple TV+ show in the city that he can’t reveal more details about just yet).

“I love her family so much: her dad, her mom, her sister, her brother, we all get along so good and we’re all still close,” he says. “We’re, obviously, even closer now, and we stay at grandma’s. He’s really close to both sides of his family, and we make sure of that.”

In addition to showing Josey more of Rivera’s projects as he gets older, Dorsey is going to keep her memory alive by throwing their son epic birthday bashes each year.

“I try to do good by her by throwing great birthday parties,” he says. “I’ll never be able to do it the way she would do things, but I think I’ve done a decent job for a couple. For number 10 [this September] I’m going to throw a blowout. I hope to make her proud by throwing parties like she used to throw for him as he gets older.”

While a party theme is still up in the air, Dorsey says it’ll likely have something to do with robots.

“There was a movie called Short Circuit in the late ’80s, and he loves Johnny 5,” Dorsey says. “There’s a bunch of replicas out there, and I’ve been trying to find him a Johnny 5 for years. But he still loves Johnny 5, and he’s really into engineering and robots. All the movies I’ve introduced him to from the ’80s, like E.T. and The Goonies, he loves them all. He’s such an ’80s soul.”