Willie Nelson Reveals He Asked Wife Twice to “Let Me Die” During 2022 COVID Battle

Willie Nelson has opened up in his new memoir about the “nightmare” COVID bout that he caught in 2022. In The Last Leaf: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity — and My Longest Love Affair  — out now via Penguin Press — Nelson’s wife,  Annie D’Angelo, confirms he went as far as asking her to “let me die.”

“I had the nebulizer on you, and a Q-tip up your nose to test for COVID-19. I got the oxygen going to keep you breathing, but it wasn’t working,” D’Angelo recalls in the book (via PEOPLE) about Nelson waking up on his bus in the middle of the night on May 4th, unable to breathe. “Paxlovid had just come out, and I knew [musician] Mickey Raphael had a prescription, which he gave to us. By this time, you could breathe, but barely.”

Buy The Last Leaf: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity

While their bus drivers (who turned down the option to fly home) took them to Austin, Nelson “stayed isolated and grew sicker” in the back. “I wasn’t sure you would make it. I alerted Dr. Greenwood that we were on our way and asked to have a mobile monoclonal antibody guy meet us at the cabin,” she continues.

D’Angelo had prepared, knowing there was a “good chance” Nelson would contract COVID, and previously decided to avoid hospitals for privacy reasons and as “hotbeds of deadly viruses.” Then, they had to wait “another day” for the Paxlovid to “kick in.”

Nelson “got sicker with every passing hour,” she remembers. “Every labored breath caused you incredible pain. I wanted to do more, but I’d done all I could. I just had to sit there and watch you suffer. It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“All I can remember is feeling excruciating pain in every cell of my body,” the Red Headed Stranger adds. “Am I right in remembering that I said, ‘Annie, you need to let me go’?”

“What I actually said was, ‘Willie, if you die, I’ll kill you.’ And you said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back in a minute,'” D’Angelo responded. “You were thinking about reincarnation, but I didn’t want to hear about reincarnation. I wanted you to understand that I was not about to let you go.”

After Nelson made it through the night, a doctor gave him an IV infusion, warning that it would “either get you better or it will kill you.” The country legend responded by telling the doctor to “give it to me.”

Nelson then suffered “two weeks of utter hell,” according to D’Angelo.

“Did I ask you to let me die?” he asks in the memoir, to which she responds: “Yup, twice. The whole thing was a nightmare.”

The Last Leaf: Reflections on Late-Life Creativity — and My Longest Love Affair is now available to purchase on Amazon.