"I never left her side. I went to every procedure -- even though she didn't want me, I went. I was there at the hospital for the last two days with her. I mean, to me, we weren't 'estranged.'"
"She didn't want me there, I didn't want to argue with a sick person," he continues. "I was on the phone with her every day. I talked to her before chemo, after chemo. When she had a couple of procedures done, she was in the hospital for a day, I was there. So, I wouldn't call it estranged. It was just, you know, she was going through a rough time and she, I guess, took it out on me. And I wasn't going to fight with her. I didn't walk away [or] ...left her. I was there."
Murphy says their marriage had its ups and down like any other marriage, but that Raiola started pushing him away once she was diagnosed with cancer.
"She fell apart when she got sick, and she didn't want me around," he admits. "Doctor told her that stress makes cancer get worse, and she said that I give her stress."
"But when I was at the hospital, she was always, 'My husband... my husband's here, my husband's here,'" he recalls. "So, I don't know, I guess that's the way that people wanted to brand it, that I was 'estranged,' but you know, I was there."
Murphy reveals his heartbreaking last private moment with Raiola, in which he comforted her.
"I was lying in bed with her the day before, but she was kind of out of it," he shares. "I was trying to calm her down, so I was just rubbing her back for like an hour trying to put her to sleep. That was the last time we spent together."
Still, Murphy says that despite her sickness, Raiola kept her sense of humor until the very end.
"I had to take her to the bathroom ... and she decided to hum a song and dance. I had to hold her up, but she was dancing!" Murphy recalls about his wife's mood in the hospital. "And the nurse said she was doing it in the elevator on the way to the tests, too. A song came on in the elevator and she was dancing."
Murphy says he'll miss Raiola "keeping [him] in line" and "yelling" at him the most.
"You know, we had a lot of good times together," Murphy reflects. "It was a crazy life at the end, you know. We were regular people, then she became a celebrity. It was kind of a crazy life being married to her, but it was good. I would never change anything."
Angela "Big Ang" Raiola died on February 18 after a long battle with brain and lung cancer. She was 55 years old. Her daughter, Raquel Scotto, is continuing her mother's legacy by doing charity work with Big Ang's Angels -- an organization that provides aid and financial relief to those in need -- and working with St Jude's Hospital.
Source/Photo Credit: ET,VH1
