Anderson Cooper Gets Emotional Recalling His Final Weeks with Mom Gloria Vanderbilt

Anderson Cooper will forever cherish the last moments he shared with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, before her death.

During a recent "Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen in Conversation" event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the CNN anchor got emotional as he recalled his final days with Vanderbilt, who died from stomach cancer in 2019. She was 95.

"We had an amazing last week or two together. We would just lay on her bed and hold hands," Cooper, 54, told longtime friend Andy Cohen during their discussion, which aired on SiriusXM's Radio Andy Tuesday.

"When she got the diagnosis ... she paused for a long time," he said. "She was like, 'Is it treatable?' And [the doctor] said, 'Look, you can go through treatments, but it's like a miracle moonshot if it has any impact, and you're going to be in a hospital.' And she was like, 'No, of course not.' And then she paused for a long time and she said, 'Well, it's like that old song. Show me the way to get out of this world, because that's where everything is,' which is an old Peggy Lee song."

At the time, Cooper looked up Lee and found an "amazing" video of the legendary singer performing "Is That All There Is" at a nightclub.

"I showed [the video] to my mom and she was like, 'Oh, that's marvelous,' which was a big word my mom liked. And it became this thing that we would look at, this Peggy Lee video of her singing 'Is That All There Is,' like, once or twice a day," Cooper recalled, getting choked up. "And then she started to sing along to it and I would start to sing along. And then we had this great moment where she was holding my hand while we were listening to the song and it was like we were dancing. And it was lovely."

"She also was watching Shark Tank a lot, which was weird," he added.

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Recently, Cooper — who co-parents son Wyatt, 16 months, with ex Benjamin Maisani — opened up to PEOPLE about his "unique" relationship with Vanderbilt.

"I miss the random phone calls with a crazy idea, or her asking me ludicrous relationship advice," he said while discussing his new book, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. "I'm certainly not anyone to give relationship advice, but I would give my mom feedback when she would go on dates, what I thought about the guys. Some of them I really didn't think much of at all! We had a really unique relationship."