14 DAY TRIAL // This weekend, Celine Dion returns to Las Vegas with her residency, after a one-year hiatus to help husband of 20 years Rene Angelil fight cancer for the second time. The cancer battle is not over yet, but Celine refuses to show any sign of weakness by putting her comeback on hold again: she wants to stay strong for him, and that’s exactly what she’ll do.
In what is perhaps Celine’s most revealing and emotional interview in recent years, with USA Today, the diva explains her reasons for coming back to work and how she and the family are dealing with the cancer diagnosis. She also reveals her strength by saying she has promised Rene she will make sure he will die in her arms.
Vegas show is for Rene
You can see a video with Celine below. At points, she’s teary and overcome with emotion, but most of the time she’s determined to power through. She starts by saying her and Rene’s cancel battle has been so mediated because they’re celebrities, but that doesn’t make them special: millions of other people go through the same, if not worse. They are those who deserve praise.
Even though she admits that “it’s not getting any easier” because of their age and the damage done the first time Rene was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1999, she chooses to see the experience as an opportunity for growth.
She wants to let Rene know that they’re “fine,” she continues off camera. That means going back to work as if he weren’t in such a bad state: if it were only up to her, she would opt to put off performing indefinitely.
“My biggest job is to tell my husband, we're fine. I'll take care of our kids. You'll watch us from another spot,” she says. “I'll say, ‘You're scared? I understand. Talk to me about it’… And Rene says to me, ‘I want to die in your arms.’ Okay, fine, I'll be there, you'll die in my arms.”
Save the tears for later
That’s not to say that Celine is as brave as she sounds every day of her life, because she isn’t. As she admits in the video, the time for crying isn’t when you see someone falling and not being able to get up again.
When that happens, she says, you have to be strong and help them up, whether they’re your children or a spouse. Only after you have made sure that they’re fine, you can go to your room to cry and have a fit over it.
The Vegas residency is Celine’s way of staying strong for Rene.
Rene, who is also the one who discovered and managed Celine from back in the day when she was just an up-and-coming singer, was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 1999. In March this year, Celine revealed that he was still in a bad shape, requiring him to be hooked up to a feeding tube.
She now tells USA Today that doctors can’t tell them how much time he has left, whether it’s 3 days or 3 months.