Amanda Kloots is determined to stay busy on her first Mother’s Day as a single parent.
The widow of Broadway star Nick Cordero — who died from COVID complications last July following a harrowing bout with the virus — said of her son, Elvis: “I want to focus on him because, if you stay too stagnant on holidays like this, that’s when you can start feeling sorry for yourself.” The 39-year-old co-host of CBS’s “The Talk” told The Post they will enjoy a bagel breakfast, then time with friends later in the day.
She’s anticipating a day “filled with love, happiness and activity.”
Kloots is also honoring her husband’s memory with an upcoming memoir, “Live Your Life: My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero,” (Harper Collins), out June 15.
Calling Elvis “my mini Nick,” Kloots reflects on how thrilled her husband would have been with their sweet son had the virus not taken his life at the age 41. “[Elvis] looks more like Nick every day, and he will carry on his legacy,” she writes.
In her exclusive interview with The Post, she said of her Elvis: “He gets cuter overnight — bigger, taller and smarter. Every morning, he’s a new little boy and growing so fast. And I love that he’s my best friend.”
In a poignant section of her book, Kloots describes recalling Elvis’s birth to Nick as she cradled her stricken husband in the hours before his death. She held his hand and repeated the mantra: “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. I love you.”
“I later realized those were the exact words I said to Elvis when he cried,” she writes, referring to the moment their fragile newborn was placed on her chest following a 56-hour labor in June 2019.
Barely nine months later, Elvis’ father was among the early wave of Americans who contracted the deadly virus in March 2020. Kloots, a fitness trainer and dancer, believes Cordero may have caught it on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, where the family was about to settle into a new house in the Hollywood Hills. He was put in a medically-induced coma shortly after entering Cedars-Sinai hospital.
Doctors put Cordero on a ventilator, gave him a tracheotomy and, due to circulation problems, amputated his right leg. The star of Broadway shows including “Waitress” and “A Bronx Tale” was fitted with a pacemaker for his failing heart, but doctors deemed him too weak for a potentially lifesaving lung transplant. At one point, Kloots told The Post last year before his death, he had no pulse for two minutes.
But Kloots fought hard, and publicly, for her husband. As the Tony nominee drifted in and out of consciousness, his vital signs seemed to improve with the healing sound of the music. She would stand outside the hospital and sing Elvis Presley’s “Got a Lot o’ Livin’ to Do!” as well as Cordero’s own song, “Live Your Life,” via Facetime for him.
Hundreds of thousands of well-wishers followed their story on Kloots’ Instagram account as she chronicled the ups and downs, frequently ending her posts with the hashtag #wakeupnick.
The glamorous couple married in 2017, three years after meeting during rehearsal for the musical “Bullets Over Broadway.” Two years after their first date, they moved into an apartment together in Midtown Manhattan before their elegant wedding in the shadow of the Empire State Building.
The love Kloots still feels for her other half is evident in her book. “Nick was a people person — the last one to leave the party, the first to be there to help, someone everyone could rely on,” she writes.
Tough choices she had to make for him ranged from authorizing the amputation to allowing his battered body to be “proned.” The technique, which Cordero appeared to find painful, involved turning him onto his stomach in an effort to ease breathing.
But the saddest decision of all, made with Kloots’ mother-in-law, Lesley, was to remove Cordero from life support He died the day after his wife was allowed to bring Elvis to see his precious “Dada” in the hospital.
Until then, despite increasingly desperate pleas for hospital authorities to make an exception, the 13-month-old had been banned from visiting during the pandemic.
“I spent ten minutes tickling him [Elvis] and playing all his favorite games to try and make him laugh,” Kloots writes of the long-awaited encounter. “Nick didn’t react, but I believe he must have sensed his presence, or at least heard him giggle.”
Elvis wasn’t there for Cordero’s passing less than 24 hours later, but other close members of the family sat there in a circle as he quietly slipped away. The music fan took his final breath to the chords of Led Zeppelin’s acoustic ballad “Going to California.”
“It was hauntingly beautiful,” Kloots recalls in the book.
Now Kloots draws comfort from songs — many performed by Cordero — including the “Bullets Over Broadway” number “Taint Nobody’s Business If I Do.”
Elvis appears to have inherited his dad’s talents. He loves to dance to the catchy tune while wearing his tot-size tap shoes.
“Nick would definitely want Elvis to know about the importance of music and how it makes you feel,” Cordero said.
“I’m sure he’s looking down on Elvis right now with a lot of pride.”
