Céline Dion Pays Tribute to Late Husband René Angélil on Fourth Anniversary of His Death
Céline Dion is honoring her late husband René Angélil with a heartfelt message four years after his death.
The 51-year-old singer shared a sweet photo of Angélil to Instagram Wednesday, opening up about how much she misses her spouse since he died of cancer in 2016.
The heartwarming shot features Angélil smiling as he holds a sleeping puppy in his arms.
“There is not a day that goes by without me thinking about your beautiful smile,” Dion wrote in both French and English in the caption of the picture.
“We miss you, thank you for watching over us my love. I love you,” she added, signing off the post, “Céline xx…”
A post shared by Céline Dion (@celinedion) on Jan 14, 2020 at 4:05am PST
Dion and Angélil were married for 22 years before he succumbed to his battle with throat cancer at the age of 74 in January 2016.
They knew one another for much longer, Angélil managing her career since 1980, when she was 12.
That closeness leaves Dion — who had three sons with Angélil: René-Charles, 18, and twins Eddy and Nelson, 9 — still thinking about her late husband every day.
In 2017, Dion revealed that losing Angélil was hard on the kids — especially the twins — but it made them even closer.
“I organize myself to not feel lonely,” she explained to The Sun. “So I got myself a huge, huge, huge bed, and I sleep with my twins. They are comforting me a lot. I need them. I need them close. When it’s time for them to say they want their room, their room’s ready. But we watch a lot of TV together. I’m discovering Disney.”
Dion said that she and her children continue to talk to Angélil even after his death. “We kiss him every night,” she said. “We have a little ritual where we say goodnight to him with a little picture. Then the kids talk to him. And they write words, put them in balloons and we send the balloons to the sky.”
There’s also a pre-concert ritual Dion said she participates in before every performance, in which she clutches a bronze replica of Angélil’s hand. “I shake my husband’s hand and knock on wood with him every night before every show,” she said in a February 2018 interview with the Daily Telegraph‘s magazine Stellar. “Even after he’s gone, I still talk to him.”
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Dion makes sure to keep his traditional seat behind the sound mixing desk empty in his honor, too. “He taught me so much. He did a great job; what he had been giving to me all his life and all my life will always be with me,” Dion said. “He gave me his all. He mortgaged his house to pay for my first album. I guess before he left he wanted to make sure I was fine. I’m trying to prove to him every day I’m fine. Our kids are growing, we feel strong. We’re good.”
