Their love will go on. Céline Dion said in a new interview that she’s not ready to think about dating, more than a year after losing her husband, René Angélil, to cancer, saying, “I think I will probably grieve for the rest of my life.”
“Now it is definitely too soon for me,” the 49-year-old said in an interview with The Sun newspaper in the U.K. published on Thursday, April 20. “I am definitely in love with him, married to him.”
Dion’s husband of almost 22 years died in January 2016 at the age of 73 after a long battle with throat cancer.
“He’s the love of my life,” she said of the former pop singer turned music manager, with whom she shares three sons. “It’s very difficult for me to see myself with another person. The love that I have for him, I live it every day. And as a woman, we do have emotions and feelings that come and go. And it’s always with him.”
Dion was just a child when Angélil, who was 26 years her senior, discovered the Quebec native and became her manager. They wed in 1994 and later welcomed son René-Charles, 16, and twins Nelson and Eddy, 6.
“René has prepared me for all my life since I’m 12,” she said. “I have never met another man in my life, never kissed another man in my life.”
“I miss him a lot,” the “Because You Loved Me” singer added. “For my partner, for the man I was embracing, kissing, making love with. My worries, my dreams …”
Dion took time off from her Las Vegas residency in 2015 to nurse Angélil, who beat throat cancer in 1999, only to have it return.
“No one chooses to be sick,” she told The Sun. “Life imposes for you to be sick and you have the option to be strong or not be strong. But to be surrounded by the right people helps a lot, because if you know you will die, make the best of it. I proved to René that he was there for me and I’m going to be there for him — and I’m still there for him.”
Dion returned to her show at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in February 2016 and released a French language album, Encore un Soir, last August. She’s set to tour Europe this summer.
