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Gene Wilder's widow reveals his final words. Gene Wilder's widow, Karen Boyer, has revealed the last words her husband said to her before he died in 2016. Karen recalled Gene's final days in a new documentary, Remembering Gene Wilder. The Willy Wonka star died of complications from Alzheimer's disease, aged 83. Karen told how the couple listened to Ella Fitzgerald's Somewhere Over the Rainbow as they lay in bed together. ”I was lying next to him, and he sat up in bed, and he said, 'I trust you,'" she said. "And then he said, 'I love you.' That's the last thing he said.” She went on to admit how Gene wasn't really aware of how ill he was. ”He never really accepted that he had Alzheimer's, and maybe by the time we found out that's what it was, his hippocampus didn't let him remember. So I'm not sure that he ever knew.” "When I'd see him slip away further from me, I was sick to my stomach, but I had to keep smiling and tell him that everything was okay.” "Gene was wonderful; he was the best husband I think anybody could ask for. To love and be loved is the best gift anybody could ask for, and we had that.” THIS VIDEO MUST NOT BE EDITED FOR LENGTH TO COMBINE WITH OTHER CONTENT