Celine Dion to her dying husband: ‘I’ll be there, you’ll die in my arms’

Just days before returning to her Las Vegas residency, Celine Dion is sharing some details from the past year of caring for Rene Angelil, her terminally ill husband.

Among those details: He’s the one who wanted her singing again, and he wants to die in her arms.

“He knows that I love so much what I do, that he wants me back” in Vegas, she told “Entertainment Tonight.”

And why is that? “Because I’m his favorite singer in the world. And I’m his wife. And I’m the mother of his three children. And we have the same passions. We love each other so much.”

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Dion, 47, took herself out of the performing game in August 2014, saying at the time, “I want to devote every ounce of my strength and energy to my husband’s healing, and to do so, it’s important for me to dedicate this time to him and to our children.”

The couple are parents to Rene-Charles, 14, and twins Eddy and Nelson, both 4.

Angelil, 73, has been fed through a tube since having a cancerous tumor removed from his throat in 2013. Dion told USA Today that doctors still can’t say how much time he has left. Their eldest has a hard time seeing his father battling cancer, she said, but added that the twins don’t know their dad any other way.

Angelil was previously diagnosed with cancer in 1999, and underwent surgery for metastasized squamous cell carcinoma. Dion took time off to care for him then as well. This time is a little different, however.

“I’ll say [to him], ‘You’re scared? I understand. Talk to me about it,’” she told the paper. “And Rene says to me, ‘I want to die in your arms.’ OK, fine, I’ll be there, you’ll die in my arms.”

Angelil, whom she met in 1980 when she was 12 and married in 1994 after dating for seven years while he was her manager, had surgery for throat cancer in December 2013. The couple live in Las Vegas.

“Don’t forget,” she told USA Today, “he’s been the leader of the band all my life.”

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