In PEOPLE’s latest cover story, the superstar says she receives signs “all the time” from Angélil, who died in 2016 from throat cancer
Nearly eight years after losing her husband and longtime manager, René Angélil, to cancer, Céline Dion still feels his presence within her heart and home.
Amid her ongoing fight with stiff-person syndrome, the superstar, 56, receives signs from Angélil “all the time,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively in its latest cover story.
“I’m still married to René. He’s still my husband. When we have to travel to my treatments to see my doctors, I always bring pictures [of him],” says Dion, who is opening up about the last several years of her life in a revealing new documentary, I Am: Celine Dion (streaming globally June 25 on Prime Video). “And we have pictures, of course, all over the place in the house.”
Dion’s sons with Angélil — René-Charles, 23, and 13-year-old twins Eddy and Nelson — also keep their dad close by.
“Even when they were very small, even when he was still with us in his bed [when he was] in his room struggling, he was with us still,” she recalls. “[They would tell him], ‘Dad, we’re going to be watching Ratatouille tonight, so I hope you like it.’ They were talking to him, and they kiss the pictures.”
Following her SPS diagnosis in August of 2022, Dion rarely left their Las Vegas home as she underwent intense treatment, including rehabilitation therapy five days a week.
While she never forgets to bring Angélil’s photos when she packs for a trip, “my kids are always asking, ‘Did you bring Papa’s pictures?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I have Papa’s pictures!'” she says. “He’s their dad, and he’s my husband, and he will always be.”
In late May, Prime Video unveiled the trailer for I Am: Céline Dion, which is directed by Oscar nominee Irene Taylor.
“I didn’t want for Irene to ask me if she was allowed to capture this or that. I was like, ‘I want you and your team, if you’re in the home of my three boys, and my dog, and myself, and my condition and my fight… I give you the OK for you to not ask,” Dion says of the filming process.
For Taylor, who has made two documentaries about her own family’s journey with deafness, the film was a chance to make a positive impact with the superstar and her massive platform.
“I know the sacredness of family privacy. I know the sacredness of bodily privacy. And yet I truly believe in my heart as an artist that the more someone will let me in, I do want to share that,” says Taylor. “I think a lot of people are going to see this film because it has Céline Dion at its back. And it might give people a new perspective on a very unknown disease, and it will also give perspective on Céline that people may not have previously had.”
To make Dion feel as comfortable as possible, “we always had a small footprint,” says Taylor. “It was just me and my cameraman. We had a sound person for one day, and we decided that was too many people.”
With the film premiering later this month, Dion is filled with gratitude for her fans and their support.
“I want my fans to know another ‘song’ of mine. My fans who know me well know not all [my] songs are happy, but they are true. And this is a song that is very honest, and a song that I own,” she says of her life over the last several years. “I miss my fans tremendously, and I hope that what they see [in the film encourages them] to speak out. Don’t suffer alone.”
