Bill Anderson Mourns The Loss Of Woman Who Was His ‘Everything’

Decades after meeting her for the first time, Whisperin’ Bill Anderson found companionship with a woman named Vickie Sallis.

They first met when she was 19 years old, and she was actually married to his guitar player. After they got a divorce, she remarried and lived on the East Coast with her husband for seventeen years. When that marriage eventually ended, she moved back to Tennessee to be near her sons.

Vickie and Bill didn’t keep in touch this entire time, but on her first morning in Tennessee, he was on the front page of the newspaper, which prompted her to call him to check in on her old friend. Unbeknownst to her, Bill’s marriage to his wife Becky had ended many years prior. The two friends met up and for the next 12 years, they were pretty much inseparable.

“We never married, we never lived together, but she became my everything from that moment forward,” he wrote in a lengthy Facebook post on Wednesday (Jan 16). The legendary singer-songwriter revealed in the same post that his “sweet Vickie…went home to Heaven today…years before it should have been her time to go.”

Vickie was diagnosed with cancer in 2016 and had tumors in her liver and lungs. Bill wrote that Vickie lost her hard-fought battle against cancer “between one and three a.m. this morning…and [took] her first breath in Heaven shortly thereafter.”

“The first thing I’m going to do when I get to Heaven is ask Him to explain this one to me. Because right now, I just don’t understand,” he wrote on Facebook.

When she was first diagnosed, Bill wrote a song called “Until The Light Comes On Again,” and he shared the video with the world for the first time today.

“I’ve always expressed myself the best when I’ve set my thoughts to music,” he said in the video before singing the song he wrote for his “sweet Vickie.”

“You can draw your strength from me / The way I’ve always drawn my strength from you / I’m here with you right beside you / Let me hold you to your hand / Let me lead you through the darkness / Until the light comes on again, ” he sings.

Watch him say a few words about his “sweet Vickie,” followed by a performance of “Until The Light Comes On Again” for her in the video below.

Our prayers are with Bill, her sons, and their families as they mourn this devastating loss.