Anderson Cooper offered a touching recorded eulogy earlier this week on the morning of his mother Gloria Vanderbilt's death at 95 , but last night he returned to the air on CNN and gave another one. The CNN anchor held back tears, but you may not be able to.

“I wanted to take a few moments to thank all of you who have reached out to me about the death of my mom, Gloria Vanderbilt,” said Anderson. “Your calls, your texts and Tweets have truly meant a lot. My mom would be stunned by all the attention and the kind words written and spoken about her. I know this because when I got her to join Instagram when she was like 92 or so she didn't think anyone would actually follow her. ‘Why would anyone be interested?' she asked. It wasn't long before she had some 200,000 followers and it tickled her beyond belief.”

“My mom found out June 8th that she had cancer,” Anderson explained. “She lived nine more days. To be able to spend those nine days and nights with her was a great, great blessing. They were the most extraordinary days of my life and I'm very grateful. She died Monday shortly after 4:00 A.M., and though I was holding her hand and her head when she took her last breath it's still a little hard for me to believe she's gone.”

Said Anderson, holding back tears: “One of her friends explained her sadness by describing my mom as her north star, a person she used as a guide, a kind of light in the darkness. I never realized until now how much she was my north star as well. And right now things seem less bright. My dad died when I was 10, and my brother when I was 21. She was the last of my immediate family who knew me from the beginning and they're all gone and it feels very lonely right now. I hope they are at least together.”

He continued: “I'm happy I was able to make the latter years of her life comfortable and fulfilling. When I die that might be the thing I'm most proud of. She knew me and I knew her, and there's great comfort in that. ‘You and I, it's a match made in heaven,' she said to me last week. ‘We're a good team,' I told her. We stayed up late that night holding hands and when she got sleepy she said to me ‘What a wonderful night,' and it was. Perhaps our best.”