Leonard Cohen's manager gives new details about his death

LOS ANGELES -- Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen died in his sleep after falling down in the middle of the night at his Los Angeles home, his manager said Wednesday.

“The death was sudden, unexpected and peaceful,” manager Robert B. Kory said in a statement.

The details from Kory provided the first glimpse of how Cohen died. No cause was given last week in the initial announcement of his death. 

The statement also said that Cohen died on Nov. 7 -- three days before his passing was made public.

The singer, songwriter and poet behind “Hallelujah,” ‘’Bird on a Wire” and “Suzanne” was 82 when he died. Cohen had been in declining health for much of the year, though he revealed few details.

He is survived by his children, Adam and Lorca, and his three grandchildren, Cassius, Viva and Lyon, the statement said.

Cohen was buried in Montreal in a small ceremony on Nov. 10, the same day his death was announced.

“With only immediate family and a few lifelong friends present, he was lowered into the ground in an unadorned pine box, next to his mother and father,” Adam Cohen wrote in a statement last week.

Cohen’s representatives say a memorial in Los Angeles is being planned. 

Tributes have poured in celebrating the life Cohen since his death, but few have been as poignant as the letter posted to Facebook by his son.

Adam Cohen took to social media to share his thoughts about his late father -- and to say thank you. 

“My sister and I just buried my father in Montreal. With only immediate family and a few lifelong friends present, he was lowered into the ground in an unadorned pine box, next to his mother and father. Exactly as he’d asked,” Adam wrote. 

“As I write this, I’m thinking of my father’s unique blend of self-deprecation and dignity, his approachable elegance, his charisma without audacity, his old-world gentlemanliness and the hand-forged tower of his work.”

“There’s so much I wish I could thank him for, just one last time,” his letter read. “I’d thank him for the comfort he always provided, for the wisdom he dispensed, for the marathon conversations, for his dazzling wit and humor. I’d thank him for giving me, and teaching me to love Montreal and Greece. And I’d thank him for music; first for his music which seduced me as a boy, then for his encouragement of my own music, and finally for the privilege of being able to make music with him.”