Behind the three decades of success, multiple awards and a Las Vegas residency, Celine Dion has experienced a lot of heartache.
She had to watch her beloved husband René Angélil battle throat cancer. Her manager and beloved husband, who had been by her side for 30 years, lost his life to the disease in early 2016.
Then just two days she lost her brother Daniel Dione to a similar cancer on the day of her husband’s birthday.
Now, almost three years after losing the important men in her life, she poses with a smile on her face, in front of a Christmas tree, hugging her three sons.
She captioned the photo with this message. “May your heart and home be filled with warmth, peace, and love. Happy Holidays everyone! ?✨ – Céline, RC, Nelson, Eddy, Charlie and Bear xxx…
It’s clear that her sons twins Eddy and Nelson, 8, and René-Charles, 17, are the source of her strength to continue working.
Whenever she is not performing Caesars Palace for her Las Vegas residency, she spends all of her time with her children. “The highlight of my day is always being with my children,” she said.
Her twin boys, who were just five years old when they lost their father, are now 8 years old and have very different personalities that keep their celebrity mom on her toes.
“If one likes to wear a certain shirt, the other one wants something completely different. They’re searching for their own individuality. It’s important for their emotional growth,” she explains.
The five-time Grammy award winner has been very open about her grief and about the huge influence her husband has had on her.
“I think I will probably grieve for the rest of my life,” adding further, “Rene has prepared me for all my life since I’m 12. I have never met another man in my life.”
Hard to make decisions
She told ABC News that she found making decisions hard without her husband by her side.
Celine and her husband and manager were married for 21 years.
“I organize myself to not feel lonely,” she told 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.”
Celine talked about how she broke the devastating news to her twin boys, saying she likened Rene passing to the animated movie Up which sees an elderly man Carl Fredricksen tie thousands of balloons to his house and takes off on a trip to complete a promise made to his late wife.
Spending time with kids
Celine told her twin boys that Papa has gone up with the balloons. As a way of connecting to him they say goodnight with a little picture and: “they write words, put them in balloons and we send the balloons to the sky,” she added.
Her residency in Vegas will end in June and she plans to spend most of her time with her children and new projects.
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Celine’s strength is something that should inspire so many others coping with grief and to encourage us all to hold our family tight.
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