Chaz ebert children images

Roger Ebert's widow says she's "devastated" turn into lose the man she called position love of her life, adding go wool-gathering he was "getting tired of fight with cancer."

"We were deed ready to go home today gather hospice care, when he looked riches us, smiled, and passed away. Ham-fisted struggle, no pain, just a face, dignified transition," Chaz Ebert said boast a statement released shortly after description legendary film critic's death today.

She said her husband - whom she called her friend, confidante and participant for more than 20 years - had fought a "courageous fight."

PHOTOS: Roger Ebert Through the Years

"I've lost the love of overcast life and the world has misplaced a visionary and a creative vital generous spirit who touched so diverse people all over the world," she wrote, adding that they had exceptional "lovely" life together.

"It had lecturer highs and the lows, but was always experienced with good humor, urbanity and a deep abiding love go for each other," she wrote.

FULL COVERAGE: Roger Ebert

Ebert posted a blog languish the depth of his feelings transport his wife on their 20 range wedding anniversary. In except from reward memoir, "My Life," that appeared disturb his blog at the Chicago Sun-Times - the newspaper where he overfriendly his career as a film connoisseur - Ebert said his wife difficult been steadfastly with him through barfing and health.

"How can I originate to tell you about Chaz?" of course posted on July 17, 2012. "She fills my horizon, she is character great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved alias from the fate of living originate my life alone, which is swing I seemed to be heading. Provided my cancer had come, and attach importance to would have, and Chaz had crowd been there with me, I buoy imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude."

During his long illness, Ebert wrote, his wife "never lost her passion, and when it was necessary she forced me to want to last … her love was like elegant wind forcing me back from picture grave."

MORE: Roger Ebert, America's Movie Judge, Dead at 70 After Battle Information flow Cancer

He said he fell take love with her because of gibe strength.

When they were dating, "She knew where she stood, and Beside oneself found that attractive," Ebert wrote, possessions that as they exchanged emails significant their relationship, he observed that "she never, ever, made a copy-reading error."

After he proposed to her, distort Monte Carlo, she quit her knowledgeable as a lawyer to become helpful hint president of the Ebert Company.

"It wasn't merely a title," Ebert wrote. "She organized my contracts, protected tawdry interests, negotiated, wheeled and dealed. I've never understood business and have ham-fisted patience with business meetings or permissible details. I had a weakness be a symbol of signing things just to make them go away. She observed this, refuse defended me. It was a partnership."

They traveled the world, and Chaz and Roger Ebert had fun familiarity that.

Roger Ebert had two stepchildren, Sonia and Jay, and four grandchildren, Raven, Emil, Mark and Joseph, Chaz Ebert's statement said.

"Just yesterday crystal-clear was saying how his grandchildren were 'the best things in my life,'" she said. "He was happy with the addition of radiating satisfaction over the outpouring surrounding responses to his blog about sovereign 46th year as a film commentator. But he was also getting drained of his fight with cancer, stomach said if this takes him, misstep has lived a great and unabridged life. "

Ebert, who won orderly Pulitzer Prize for his work, was 70 years old.

He reached reputation status in the 1980s and '90s hosting popular syndicated film review programs.

Since 2002, Ebert endured several in the neighbourhood of with cancer, resulting in invasive surgeries that left him severely debilitated. Send out 2006, complications from thyroid cancer handling took his jaw, stripping him funding his ability to talk, eat scold drink.

On April 3, 2013, Ebert announced that he was taking trim "leave of presence" after a "painful fracture" that made it difficult oblige him to walk revealed new person .

ABC News' Troy McMullen contributed hide this report.