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"We were all there ... she had so much love."
Toni Braxton has the unenviable task of promoting her latest series of Lifetime films just two weeks after the death of her sister Traci and appeared on "The Tamron Hall Show" on Tuesday to give her first interview since her passing.
Traci died on March 12 at the age of 50, "after a year of privately undergoing a series of treatment for Esophageal cancer," according to her family. Speaking with Hall, Braxton said everyone was with her when she passed on.
"[Traci] and her son were so close, her and her grandson and her son's wife. We were just a big family. We were all there. Her son was there, husband was there, everyone was there. Her best friends were there, everyone was there with her. She had so much love," recalled Toni.
"The hospice nurses were incredible. You never think that it's going to happen to you and your family. So you have to remind yourself to enjoy the moments, be happy and it's okay if you fuss and fight but just enjoy the moments and try to just smile and be happy," she continued. "Be kind to one another."
Though Braxton admitted it wasn't her "best day," she was still doing okay and was happy to be able to talk about her sister's legacy on the daytime show.
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View Story"Her birthday is coming up soon on the second and my sisters and I are going to celebrate and have a big Traci day thingy. So I'm excited about that," she added.
Braxton explained that the team behind "The Fallen Angels Murder Club," an anthology of films in which she stars, was very accommodating throughout her sister's battle. She also said the family had more time with Traci than they initially anticipated.
"My sister was really ill towards the end -- really, really ill -- and they thought she wouldn't make it through Thanksgiving, they thought she wouldn’t make it through Christmas, they thought she wouldn't make it through the New Year and she made it through March," she said, "so you have to celebrate that."
Since Traci's death, Toni told Hall she's already seen what she considers signs from her sister.
"I'm a rain girl, I love when it rains. My sister Traci, she loves when it snows and she died that morning when it was actually pouring down snow in Virginia," she explained. "So my sister is now a snowflake."
"And her favorite bird was a hummingbird and I saw a hummingbird the other day and it just kind of flew around and kind of suspended itself and I was like 'Traci?' and it started bumping and going up and down," she added. "So that made me feel so much better, I felt like she was trying to say hello to me."
Speaking more generally about her relationship with all of her siblings -- including Towanda, Tamar and Trina -- Braxton said they're so close they're like "twins."
"We're bound together by more than just DNA, by blood, and it is just something special that my parents did such a fantastic job raising all of us together, making us so close," she said. "And so to lose one makes it a little more difficult sometimes. I wake up every morning and I go, 'Did I dream it? Did I dream it?' and I have to remind myself, 'No, she's gone but she's been here with us for 50 years.'"
"So I try to relish in that moment and try to smile about it and just be grateful for the time you have and you have to always remember to be kind to one another," she added, acknowledging that they do sometimes fight, but, "in the end, we're always there" for each other.
She concluded: "We're just very fortunate to have had my sister with us for as long as we had."
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