Rita Wilson's heartbreaking two requests of Tom Hanks if she died of breast cancer

Rita Wilson has pulled the curtain back on her emotional response to the grueling bout of breast cancer she suffered in 2015.

The 69-year-old wife of Tom Hanks had a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery while fighting the illness, taking a month off from her run in Larry David's Broadway show Fish in the Dark in order to undergo the procedures.

Now she has looked back on her brush with mortality while speaking to her old friend Demi Moore onstage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

She shared that she spoke to her husband about the possibility she would succumb to her illness and how she hoped he would handle the loss.

'But I said to Tom, I'm like: "Okay, if, if something happens and I go first, I just have two requests. And one is that you should be sad for a very, very long time,"' Wilson remembered, according to People.

'The second one was throw me a party. I want it to be a celebration of life. I want it to be about people telling stories and joy and, remembering me in that way. And I think people, a lot of people want that, you know? I think there's room for that.'

She noted that her 2019 song Throw Me a Party was inspired by her cancer battle, during which she thought to herself: 'I don't know, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I hope I'm still here, you know, in a few years.'

Last March she posted to Instagram celebrating '10 years of being cancer free' and sharing her gratitude to those who saw her through the crisis.

'I'm so thankful to my doctors, to my friends, to my family. The gratitude is overwhelming. Didn't always feel this way,' she said.

She observed that cancer patients and survivors understand 'that it's an up-and-down hamster wheel, but then you get to this point.'

While Wilson was fighting the disease, Hanks assumed a protective role, furiously denouncing unscrupulous doctors who tried to take financial advantage of her.

'There’s a predatory philosophy that happens where people find out that you have a certain illness, particularly cancer, and they will try and make money off of you, pushing procedures that might have a degree of science to them and there are others that are absolute quacks just trying to make money,' he told news.com.au.

Wilson meanwhile made a point of noting that her initial pathology test failed to unearth the cancer before a second opinion confirmed the presence of the disease.

'I am recovering and most importantly, expected to make a full recovery. Why? Because I caught this early, have excellent doctors and because I got a second opinion,' she shared in an interview with People. 

'I hope this will encourage others to get a second opinion and to trust their instincts if something doesn’t "feel" right,' added the Los Angeles native.

She shared that she had 'my husband by my side' through her surgeries and felt 'blessed' to be able to lean on her loved ones and doctors.

Wilson and Hanks exchanged vows in 1988 and have since welcomed a brace of sons into the world, 35-year-old Chet and 30-year-old Truman. 

Speaking to Oprah Winfrey in 2001, Hanks called Wilson his best friend 'in addition to being my lover. And it has been that way from the very beginning. We laugh just as much now at two in the morning as we always have. And we fight less and less.'

He reflected that the 'success of our relationship was a matter of timing, maturity, and our willingness to have an intimate connection.'

Hanks recalled: 'When I married Rita, I thought: "This is going to require some change on my part." I won't deny that providence was part of us finding each other, but our relationship isn't magic - the way it's shown in movies.'

He observed: 'In real life, our connection is as concrete as me sitting here. Not that marriage doesn't come close to being hell in a handbasket sometimes. But we both know that no matter what, we'll be with each other - and we'll get through it.'