‘We wished we didn’t wake up’: Michael Buble’s tears over son’s cancer

In one of his most candid interviews to date, Michael Buble has fought back tears on camera as he revealed he and his wife would often wish not to wake up after discovering their son Noah had been diagnosed with cancer.

The singer and wife Luisana Lopilato were left devastated when their eldest son Noah, now five, was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer in 2016. Michael immediately stepped away from the limelight in the years that followed to support his son through every stage of his treatment and subsequent recovery.

Now, speaking to Aussie TV presenter Richard Wilkins in an interview for the Today show, the 43-year-old dad-of-three has revealed the full extent of the couple’s grief at the time – and even admitted he hasn’t used social media, read a report about himself or watched an interview back ever since, in an effort to distance himself from the “narcissistic” side of the showbiz industry.

“It sucked and it still sucks, because what we went through was the, capital T-H-E, the worst possible thing that you could hear as a parent and as maybe a human being,” he said of the moment he found out Noah had cancer.

Michael Bublé opened up about his young son's battle with cancer.
“I much rathered it would have been me… Sometimes we wished we didn’t wake up.” ❤ #9Today pic.twitter.com/F7lgDJnjF1

— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) October 3, 2018

“I much rather it would have been me. Many times I wish that it had been. Look it’s impossible, there were a million times that my wife and I were surviving, struggling to survive and to breathe – and more times than people could understand, [there were] some days when we wished we didn’t wake up. When we did, we felt the love of those people.

“We knew they were praying for us, we knew there was goodness out there, they gave us faith in humanity to be really blunt.”

Wiping away tears he added: “It was just massive.”

As Richard changed the subject to shower praise on the singer by pointing out he has become one of the most successful artists across the world, Michael insisted he has no idea how he’s really doing – as he now refuses to look himself up online or even check social media.

“When we got the diagnosis, I remember sitting in one of the hospital rooms and I remember how clear things became to me. Part of that clarity was I promised myself that I never wanted ego or the narcissistic part of whatever this business that we’re in is. I couldn’t stomach it anymore,” he admitted.

“I knew that life was too short and that I couldn’t possibly digest any more of it… I never ever again did social media after that day, in that minute that I found out I knew I would never go back, I knew that I would never look at myself ever again in print, I would never see myself in an interview, I would never read… It’s over, I think ignorance has become the greatest bliss for me.

Read more: Michael Buble reveals how son’s cancer battle made his marriage stronger

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“I could never have imagined that I could be this free and this happy. I want to be a good dad and good family dude that happens to love making music. But even before this happened for our family and my boy, I had really lost my way. I had lost the joy and forgotten why I loved this in the first place.

“I had started to let the ego and false self into my self, I just wasn’t enjoying it. Even though this is rotten what’s happened, that perspective has changed my life in the biggest way.”

The couple, who met in 2009 while filming Michael’s video for single Haven’t Met You Yet, confirmed the youngster was making a good recovery at the end of last year, with Michael describing the period as an “emotional rollercoaster”.

He’s now preparing to return to the stage, and previously said he wouldn’t be considering it if Noah wasn’t fully recovered – but admitted they’ll always be monitoring it.

Do you have a message for Michael? Has one of your children been diagnosed with cancer in the past?