As a final musical tribute to her late husband Nick Cordero, American fitness instructor Amanda Kloots took to Instagram Live on Monday to sing the 2018 song Live Your Life, before thanking fans for their continued support.
“Nick’s dream of becoming a rock star definitely happened and it was because of you guys, your support and for doing this with me every day,” the widow said before performing the tune originally penned by her husband and breaking down in tears.
Cordero died on July 5 after a months-long battle with complications from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. He was 41.
“My darling husband passed away this morning,” wrote Kloots in an Instagram post on Sunday evening. “He was surrounded in love by his family, singing and praying as he gently left this earth.”
Before his tragic passing, Kloots hosted an Instagram Live each afternoon, for 95 days consecutively, as Cordero fought the life-threatening virus from his Los Angeles, Calif., hospital bed. Throughout the streams, the 38-year-old would provide fans with updates before singing along to either Cordero’s Live Your Life or Elvis Presley’s Got a Lot o’ Livin’ to Do.
The idea originated from the latter song after Kloots once played it to her Tony Award-winning husband via FaceTime in March while he was in a six-week spanning coma. At the time, a nurse had observed that his blood pressure improved upon hearing it, according to ET Online.
Ever since that moment, Kloots encouraged fans, every day, to share videos of them singing or dancing along to Live Your Life with the hashtag #WakeUpNick, so that she could send them to Cordero.
Oftentimes, the streams included the couple’s one-year-old son, Elvis, as well.
“There were days that I did not think I could get on social media and sing, but I always felt better after I did,” Kloots said in her most recent — and since-expired — stream.
“Singing and dancing … it’s an amazing way to have some therapy in your life,” she added.
Kloots also revealed that she had visited Cordero in his hospital room on the day that he died and sang Live Your Life to him in person.
“So many of the lyrics are so crazy on point and they’re just so beautiful,” she said.
Kloots continued: “Life throws so many things at you and you never know what that is. It could be a serious illness like Nick had, it could be you get fired from your job, it could be you have a fight with a family member.”
“I think Nick’s point (was to) fight for it and don’t let that kill your life. Keep moving, keep striving, keep working, keep singing, keep dancing, keep living,” she said.
Following her Instagram Live performance, a teary-eyed Kloots expressed positivity that the Hamilton, Ont.-born entertainer died peacefully.
“Nick left this earth with people around him that he loved (and) listening to music,” she said. “I don’t think he would’ve wanted anything else.”
“I think we gave him a good send off and I’ll miss him everyday of my life, that’s for sure,” the mother concluded, with baby Elvis in her arms.
Cordero had experienced complications during his treatment for COVID-19, including lung infections and blood clotting in his right leg.
Kloots announced in mid-May that her husband had woken up from a medically induced coma, after having his right leg amputated just weeks earlier.
On July 2, three days before his death, she said that Cordero might need a double lung transplant.
The couple was married in 2017.
Cordero’s career involved playing a mob soldier on Broadway in 2014 in Woody Allen’s 1994 film adaptation of Bullets Over Broadway.
He received a Tony nomination for best-featured actor in a musical for that role. He moved to Los Angeles to star in Rock of Ages. He has appeared in several episodes of Blue Bloods and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
— With files from Global News’ Maryam Shah and Don Mitchell