Bruno Mars still doesn’t know how to "handle" his mother’s death.
The ‘Count on Me’ hitmaker suddenly lost his mother Bernadette San Pedro Bayot in June 2013 to a brain aneurysm and admits her death blindsided him.
He said: "To this day, I don’t know how to handle it. That piece of your heart is just gone forever.
"I don’t even know how to talk about it with you. It’s a nightmare. It’s literally a nightmare."
And whilst the 31-year-old singer was glad his mother never suffered, he found it hard to comprehend what had happened.
He added: "If anything, she was getting younger. I’d just bought her this house in Hawaii, and she would call me almost every day to tell me how much fun she’s having, she and the grandkids are in the pool, running around in the yard … I didn’t have to go through my mother suffering in the hospital for years. But it’s like – she was just bugging me about something … That was the hardest part. That was the spike in the heart."
Meanwhile, Bruno admits he has finally started to come to terms with her death and is "confident" she is looking down on him with a smile on her face.
He told the Rolling Stone magazines: "I was in shambles. I didn’t know what to do. There’s nothing you can do. You just ball up and bawl your eyes out every day. I’d pray and ask, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And I felt like what she wanted me to do was keep going. She wouldn’t want me to stop.
"I’m confident that she’s looking down and smiling, you know? And every time I mess up onstage, I hear her. ‘You’re flat!’ ‘You missed that move!’ ‘Tell your brother to shave his mustache!’ It’s all there."