Debbie Reynolds suffered a stroke and died on December 28, 2016, just a day after the death of her daughter, beloved actress and author Carrie Fisher. Debbie and Carrie were famously close at the time, and many fans of the pair wondered if Debbie was unable to go on living after Carrie died.
Sue Cameron was friends with Debbie for over 40 years, and she echoed the idea that Carrie's death "shattered" the screen legend. However, she says that she knows Debbie wanted to keep living for her granddaughter, Billie Lourd.
"Debbie wanted to be there for her granddaughter Billie. After Carrie died, she had a reason to live, to take care of Billie."
Sue continued by explaining, "I don't know how much longer she would have lived but she really did want to live for Billie. But a stroke came on and that was it."
Sue is the author of numerous books about Hollywood elite. In 2018, she shared that Debbie had experienced a "vision" and believed Carrie would not make it home for the holidays in 2016:
"I made it a point to go over every three weeks to see Debbie, and on that last day that I saw her, on Dec. 21, she told me she had had a vision the night before."
Sue continued by noting that Debbie said she had been in bed when she "felt death come over her." Debbie thought she would be passing on. "Oh all right, I guess this is it."
But Sue says the cloud moved to the left of the bed, where it stayed.
"Debbie said, 'I guess it wasn’t for me,' but in hindsight, I realized the cloud settled over the exact spot where Carrie always sat on Debbie's bed."
Sue also insists that Debbie wasn't scared of dying.
Sue shared, "She was absolutely ready to go and said that if it happens, she had a wonderful life and that people get old and you have to accept it."
However, Debbie was worried about Carrie. She reportedly told Sue, "'I don't know what will happen to Carrie if I go and that is my only worry.'"
This feeling is said to have extended to the very day Carrie died.
"The day Carrie got on the plane from London, Debbie told her assistant and caretaker … that she did not believe Carrie was coming home. She did not say 'Carrie is going to die today,' but she said 'Carrie is not coming home.'"
The public has been interested in Debbie and Carrie's relationship ever since Carrie was born in 1956. While they didn't always get along, there was a consistent and strong bond of love between them. The two were even next-door neighbors for the last 15 years of their lives.
Both admitted that there was 10-year period in which they didn't speak at all. Their decade of estrangement followed Carrie's success in Star Wars.
In 2011, Carrie told Oprah, "We had a fairly volatile relationship earlier on in my 20s. I didn't want to be around her. I did not want to be Debbie Reynolds' daughter."
Debbie was also part of the interview, and she explained even more. "It was a total estrangement. She didn't talk to me for probably 10 years."
This prompted Carrie to add, "We talked really badly. We didn't get along. We had the extra, larger-than-life relationship. This is a very powerful person but in order to have my own identity, I have to forge some kind of character out of nothing."
However, the two definitely reconciled, and they often praised one another. Debbie once said, "I'm not as intellectual as my daughter. She says bigger words than I, I don't even know what they mean. But she's so amusing to me and it's wonderful to be around her."
A month before she died, Carrie had only positive things to say about her mother. She told NPR, "I just admire my mother very much. She also annoys me sometimes when she's, you know, mad at the nurses. But, you know, she's an extraordinary woman, extraordinary. There are very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life and raised children and had horrible relationships and lost all her money and got it back again. I mean, she's had an amazing life, and she's someone to admire."
