Celine Dion told her late husband Rene Angelil in his final moments that she wanted him to “go in peace” after a battle with throat cancer.
“I saw him suffer and that was the worst,” Dion told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview that aired Wednesday.
“I started to talk to him and I said, ‘You know what? I want you to just go in peace. I want you to not worry.'”
Angelil, who was Dion’s longtime manager, died Jan. 14 in Las Vegas at the age of 73.
The singer will pay tribute to him on Sunday night when she performs Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” at the Billboard Music Awards telecast. She will also receive Billboard’s Icon Award at the ceremony.
Dion said the rock ballad was one of Angelil’s favourite songs.
“He really insisted that we were going to do ‘The Show Must Go On’ in here at the Colosseum,” she said, speaking from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Dion also spoke about how she used Pixar’s “Up” to help explain her husband’s death to Eddy and Nelson, their five-year-old twins.
“I said, do you remember the movie ‘Up’?” she said. “Today Papa went up.”
“The only thing I wanted is for them to say ‘up.’ Up is a good thing. Up is uplifting,” Dion added.
She then recalled taking her sons outside with “pixie dust” to say goodbye to their father.
“We’re going to spread this and it’s going to go to him,” she told them.
“We’re going to go outside right now before it gets dark. We’re going to make a wish, we’re going to talk to Papa and we’re going to send balloons right now.”
Dion said she still asks herself what her husband would think about certain matters of business and her family.
“But after awhile am I going to have signs all the time? Or do I have to make decisions as a woman, as a mother, as an artist?” she said.
“You’re never ready for something like this to happen. Even though you expect it, when it hits you, you’re not prepared.”
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