By JOSE MARTINEZ
 DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

 Her beloved Cuba may yet be the final resting place for Celia Cruz.

 The salsa legend's husband, Pedro Knight, told the Daily News yesterday that he dreams of someday taking his wife's remains from the Bronx to the island she fled when Fidel Castro seized power in 1960.

 "I would take her home to be buried next to her mother," Knight said. "That's what she always wanted."

 Surrounded by loved ones, Cruz died of cancer last month at age 77. Her death set off waves of grief in New York and Miami, where hundreds of thousands of fans flocked to memorials for the flamboyant singer who recorded more than 70 albums in a career that spanned nearly six decades.

 But the response from her homeland was stony silence. "Cuba ignored her," Knight said.

 Cruz had been living in New York for two years when her mother died in Cuba in 1962. Castro did not allow her to attend the funeral. She vowed not to return while he was in power.

 As the one-month mark of Cruz's death nears, on Saturday, Knight is slowly adjusting to life without his friend, companion and cook of 41 years.

 "It's difficult," he said. "She always took care of me."

 But the white-haired Knight, known as cabecita de algodón, or little cottonhead, savors the mammoth sendoff she received.

 Knight smiled as he recalled his wife telling him that she wanted her funeral to be held in a place with a huge parking lot.

 Tens of thousands of fans waited on line for hours to say good-bye to Cruz at an upper East Side funeral home. A day later, thousands stood in the rain outside St.
 Patrick's Cathedral and Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for her funeral and burial.

 "If she was alive, she would have said, 'See, I told you I wanted a place for a lot of people,'" Knight said. "And that was a lot of people!"

 Cruz, whose posthumous album, "Regalo del Alma," is the No. 1 Latin seller this week according to Billboard, was stricken with cancer six months before she died. Four of Cruz's other albums are in the top 25.

 Marking anniversary

 Two days before her death, with Cruz barely conscious in their Fort Lee, N.J., home, the couple (they met when she was a singer and he a trumpet player in the Cuban band La Sonora Matancera) marked their wedding anniversary with a touching final moment.

 "I told her, 'Negra, today we've reached 41 years of marriage,'" Knight said, "and one huge tear rolled down her face."

 Knight also signed off on a movie project in which Whoopi Goldberg would play Cruz.

 "People ask why an American actress, and not a Cuban?" he said. "Well, she came up with the idea. And she can pull it off - she's a complete actress."

 Knight said he plans to stay in the Fort Lee penthouse. "The day she got out of the hospital in April, we sat to look at the river and she said, 'Pedro, isn't my little house beautiful?'" he said.

 "That's stuck with me, so that's where I'm staying."