“The Worst Feeling I Ever Had”: Willie Nelson Wanted To Die During “Terrible” 2022 Health Battle

Willie Nelson faced a brutal health battle in 2022. In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the country music legend recalled his “terrible” fight with SARS-CoV-2.

“I wanted to punch out. I wanted to go. Annie wouldn’t let me,” Nelson said of his wife, Annie D’Angelo. “I could tell that I was dying, and I wanted to die. It was the worst feeling I ever had.”

Nelson and D’Angelo previously discussed the singer’s health battle in a 2022 interview with The New York Times Magazine.

“We turned the house into a hospital,” D’Angelo said. “There were a couple of times when I wasn’t sure he was going to make it.”

Nelson agreed, stating, “I had a pretty rough time with it—ain’t nothing to laugh at, that’s for sure.”

Two weeks later, Nelson was back on the road.

“At the end of every tour, Will talks about retiring,” D’Angelo said. “‘I think I might retire.’ But then we’ll have a conversation: ‘Well, what would you do if you retired?’ We both know the answer: Just lay down and die. It’s impossible to imagine him not being out there.”

What to Know About Willie Nelson

Since that health battle, Wilson has continued to make music and tour, and he’s gearing up to release his latest book, The Last Leaf: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity—and My Longest Love Affair, on Nov. 10.

In the book, Nelson writes about what he believes happens when people die.

“Thanks for letting me go on this ride. Thanks for letting me take this trip. I don’t know when the trip is going to end, but that doesn’t matter, because I do believe that when it does end another trip will begin,” Nelson writes. “And that trip and the one that follows will go into that good night forever and a day. So there is no end. There just is.”

Speaking to Cooper, Nelson added of death, “You keep coming back. I believe in reincarnation. When we leave we’ll be right back. Don’t go nowhere.”

As for what he’d like to come back as, Nelson was quick to answer, “A rodeo cowboy.”

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