Welcome to All There Is season three episode two. I've been thinking a lot about what Andrew Garfield said in last week's episode, talking about the grief he feels over his mom's death.
'It's the only route to feeling her close again. It's the longing. It's the - it's the admission of the pain. It's the crying out. Hey, I need you. What are you. I miss you so much. And only in the absence. Only in really inhabiting that absence and being that little boy at the bottom of the empty cave in vast darkness and just kind of crying out. That's the only moment that she that she comes. Feeling it is the only way I can really feel close to her again. The grief and the loss is the only route to the vitality of being alive. The wound is the only route to the gift.
The wound is the only route to the gift. I love that phrase. It reminds me of a short poem by the 13th century mystic Rumi. He wrote, "I said, What about my eyes? He said, Keep them on the road. I said, What about my passion? He said, Keep it burning. I said, What about my heart? He said, Tell me what you hold inside it. I said, Pain and sorrow. He said, Stay with it. The wound is the place where the light enters you." I've only just started to feel my grief to inhabit it, as Andrew said. But I do already feel it's bringing me closer to the vitality of being alive. And I'm excited about what discoveries await me. Last week, we launched an online grief community. You can find it right now at CNN.com/allthereisonline. You can watch on your desktop, on your laptop or on your mobile phone. There you can find a video version of the interview with Whoopi Goldberg and all future podcast interviews at the site. You can also connect with others who are watching and listening and leave comments of your own. You can also hear some of the thousands of voicemails that I've heard from people who've left us messages at the end of the last two seasons. I think these messages are so moving and hearing your voices and your experiences with grief, it's helped me feel less alone. And I hope it does that for you as well. This is just one of the voicemails you can hear at cnn.com/allthereis online.
'My name is Marika. I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer about two years ago. I lost my mom. I was 25 and she died from metastatic breast cancer. My grandmother also had it, although she lived to be in her 80s. Turns out that we have a genetic malformation called CDH-1. We all had mastectomies at fairly young ages. When my mom, who was on hospice care at the end, a grief counselor said One thing that has always stuck with me that we are grieving for the one person and it can be a terrible grief, but the dying person knows that she's going to lose everybody in her life that she's ever loved. And I understand even more now as I am facing the same thing, hopefully not for a couple of years yet, but I know I won't get to see my granddaughter get married. She's 13 now and I'm just getting to know her well. My two grandsons, the littlest one is 3. I know I won't be able to see him graduate high school. My husband, who I was lucky enough to find just seven years ago. It's devastating, losing and knowing in advance about it. In the meantime, I'm going to do my very best to love them all as hard as I can. And that's all there is for me.
Marika, thank you so much for your call and keep loving them as hard as you can. We'll be right back with Whoopi Goldberg.
'My guest today is Whoopi Goldberg. She's had an incredible career as a comedian, actor, writer and co-host of The View. She's won all the awards there are, including a Grammy, a Tony and an Academy Award for best supporting actress in the movie Ghost. Whoopi's mom, Emma Johnson, died in 2010, and her older brother, Clyde died five years later. Whoopi writes about it with love and humor in a recently published memoir called Bits and Pieces: My mother, my brother and me, I first heard about what be when I was in high school. In 1984, my mom saw what he performed on Broadway in a one woman show was a huge hit. And I remember the next day my mom telling me all about the show and how there was this amazingly talented woman named Whoopi.
Thank you so much for doing this.
It's such a pleasure and an honor. I really liked your mom. I was really liked your mom a lot. If you grew up here in New York, she was like the coolest. You know, she's the coolest. And and she did the jeans line. She was just this woman. And she in many ways reminded me of my mom because they did what they did. They were who they were. And they didn't seem to care who liked it and who didn't. And so when I read about your family, I thought, I get them. I get that. So I'm really happy to be here with you.
How would you describe your mom? What was she like?
Listen, to be as strange a child as I was. I was in with the right people, you know, because they were both as weird as I was. My mother was, well, that's the crazy part. The mother that I knew was vastly different from the mother that she was because she had a nervous breakdown, was put into Bellevue and given shock treatment for two years. But when you're eight, you don't understand what's happening. Your mother's turned into some other being, and now they've taken her away and nobody's telling you anything.
You were in elementary school and you came home. And your mother was wearing a coat in the house?
Yes, she had on. I will never forget it. But I came home from school and my mother was wearing a black trench coat with a white slip underneath. Her hair was insane, and she was standing in front of the open door of the closet, shaking, kind of shaking and and muttering. And then and I came and said, "Ma," you know, "ma, ma." And then she kind of just turned around, went over to the stove. Turned the gas on. And put her head in it. And I thought, this. This. This is bad. So what do I do? What do I do?
It must have been terrifying.
Well, I think I. Some adult thing in my brain said you have to speak to her and ask what's happening? You have to ask her, clearly. And so this little kid said, "Ma." And she pulled her head out and she said, Go get Miss Viola, who was our downstairs neighbor.
She pulled her head out of the oven.
She pulled her head out of the oven and I could smell the gas. So I went down to the fifth floor, got Ms. Viola, and she she called the ambulance. They tied my mother to the gurney, waiting for the elevator to come. And off they went. And no one said, and this is what's going on.
You did not see her from that moment on for two more years?
And no one thought to sit you down and talk to you about it?
Well, no. You know, you didn't talk to kids then.
When she returned from two years of being locked up. And having electroconvulsive therapy and God knows what else. She later revealed to you that she had no idea who you were.
She didn't know who these children were in the house.
She said, "can I tell you a secret?" I said, "Yeah." She said I didn't know who you were when when they brought me back. I just knew that whatever they said, if they said the sky was orange and I saw was blue, I was going to say it was orange.
Because she did not want to be sent back there.
Never. She never did. And Clyde and I were so startled by this because we had no idea that she didn't know who we were. And she said, I learned from what you all told me. She never wanted to go back to a doctor's office at all. No kind of doctor.
And didn't. Never went to a dentist.
Never went to the dentist. She ended up with one fang at the bottom. I used to call her Fang. Because she she had this one fang.
The mantra that as a little child after this happened that you develop and held on to was "don't ask anyone for anything. Be good. Don't cause any trouble. Stay to yourself." You went inside yourself?
Yeah, because I couldn't really get what I needed. Which was someone to explain. Did I do something? Is something wrong with her because of me? So I just said, okay, I'll just deal with it this way. And always remember anything can happen at any time and you have no control. And that's the thing that years later I said to my mother, I have to tell you. When you went to the hospital, it was probably the best thing that could have happened for me because I understood instantly that nothing is forever. And that was really good for me to know because it allowed me to sort of develop my thinking.
I, I very much relate to that. My dad died when I was ten, and that was the realization that terrible things happen and no amount of hugging or being told it was going to be okay. Some things aren't going to be okay. And I very much like you, retreated into my self. That idea of taking care of yourself that you hold still and it for good and bad. I think.
Yes, I was trying to figure out how to say that. Yeah, it is for good and bad.
But it's not great for other people around you necessarily, or at least for me. It's not great for other people around me.
This is why I live alone, not married. Married 4000 times. Can't deal with it. I can't do.
I'm not able to ask people for help.
I think for me, it's just it's easier not to engage, you know? It's just easier.
It feels more comfortable.
You wrote after your mom died, "she'd prepared me for this day, but I would never be ready. I wasn't ready to not be her kid." And you also said it took a while to settle in on me that my mom's death has been the most devastating experience of my life. It was an acute trauma. I still think about her every single day.
Yes. But I didn't think I was responding correctly. And I. I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't more devastated. And then a couple of days ago, I figured it out.
I figured it out a couple of days ago. There was nothing left unsaid with us. So there was no there was no angst to find that thing that I've seen in movies where I see people go through. I didn't go through it because my experience was, you know, I adored and loved you and you were the the center of my life and the same with my brother. And we said it to each other all the time.
That idea, which I love pf nothing left unsaid. And I. I actually did a documentary for HBO about my mom called Nothing Left Unsaid, which is about this conscious effort to not leave anything unsaid when something has died, which I think is so important. But it changes the way grief feels.
Yes. And it's it doesn't feel like movie grief, because I think many of us learned how to respond to things from movies, movies and television or books that we've read. And and when you have said all the things that, you know, you want to say to somebody when they go, you're not going, if I just had that. And that discovery made me laugh. And I thought, okay, you see, sometimes is it is what it is, it's okay.
To me, it's the difference between grieving somebody who you have had a life with and being able to have a life with, and it's an adult death and you are holding that grief in the hands of an adult as opposed to the kind of grief a child experiences. Yes. You said a couple of days after she died, I realized that there would be no one on this earth who loved me as much as she did. I wouldn't put that kind of sparkle in anyone else's eye. She and my brother were my first loves.
The grief you felt after Clyde's death was both for Clyde, but also suddenly that realization of, Wow, I'm the only one.
I'm the only one left. I knew eventually that might be the case, but it never. I mean, it never occurred to me, you know? And then suddenly I was just like, this is I don't like this. I don't like this. I've never felt alone like this. And of course, I have a you know, I have a 50 year old daughter. And so there's that family. You know, I have three grandkids and one great grandkid, and they're wonderful, but they're a family. And I always kind of feel like I'm an extra, you know.
You're the adult also. You're not the child in that family. With Clyde and your mom, you were the child.
'Yeah. I am granny in this family, and. And I like them all. And they all like me. And we have a good time. And. But I am I - there's an emptiness.
I had been anticipating my mom's death, and I was as ready for it as anything but the one thing which I had not anticipated was exactly what you're talking about, which is this feeling of, my God, I'm the only one who remembers. I'm the only one who holds these memories?
You mentioned a song that reminds you of your mom.
My mom used to sing in the house, and so she'd sing these wonderful standards. And this one always just. I guess I've always felt that this was my song, you know?
Would you be okay if I played it?
It's called Who Can I Turn To?
Who can I turn to? When nobody needs me. My heart wants to know. And so I must go. Where destiny leads me. Yeah.
This was always my song and I loved hearing her sing it because she'd always sing. This one now is not feeling good.
That question, Who can you turn to? It's also that idea that I'm the only one left who remembers and the keeper of these memories. I've talked about it before as a sort of feeling like a lighthouse keeper on some isolated island trying to keep this flame alive. Because if it if I. If I forget these stories, then they're just going to disappear and no one will ever remember. And so that question of, like, who can you turn to, to sort of because, you know, with your kids, it's one thing, but you don't want to put on a whole bunch of stuff on them? You know.
You got you. Yeah, that's that's what you got. You got you. And if you're lucky enough and I think you're lucky and I was lucky, they kind of prepared us to be on our own. But I don't I don't think anything can prepare you for actually being on your own.
Whoopi's brother, Clyde died in 2015. He was living in her house in Berkeley, California, and had been telling Whoopi that he was going through their mom's things to organize everything. But after his death, she discovered Clyde hadn't been able to go through anything.
And we had a whole thing. And I was going to do this and he was going to do that. And every time I said, Do you need any more help? No, no, everything's great. And so I get up there now to deal with his stuff.
After he passed and he hadn't done anything. And that's when I realized that I probably should have given him time, because that loss, as bad as the loss was for me, for him. It was beyond. Beyond.
He never really got over that stuff.
No. And I am surprised he lasted as long as he did. You know, we had such a good time. And I. I had a hard time going to basketball games because he's a big ol sports cat. We went to a lot of stuff and and then I just. I just didn't feel it, you know? And then I knew that I was in trouble because I thought, nobody wants this for nobody wants you to not live your life.
I tell myself that all the time.
Yeah, you have to, because you just stop. You just stop. Do I? I used to do Christmas party for gaggles of kids every year at my house, and I stopped doing it for about three years, 3 or 4 years. And all the things that we all did together. I stopped. And then I thought, it's not a good thing. People would come up to me and say, I'm really sorry. And I'd say, okay, thank you. And I'd get mad because I'd want them to stop asking or saying, Are you okay? No, I'm not okay. Grief comes when it comes. It comes in very strange ways.
You know, when somebody dies, people don't know what to say. And I've been doing this, but I guess I still don't know what to say a lot of times. What do you say to people?
I just recommend saying I'm so sorry. And hug somebody or write them a note. Say, I I don't know how to deal with this because it's never happened to me. Be honest. No one who hasn't lost this way can understand. So you can't be mad at them for not saying the right thing because even you don't know what the right thing is. All of these things are going to be coming at you and you're going to get really pissed off because you could. Why are you you know, why are you talking to me like this? It's because they don't know what to say. So just let people love you, Let them come and love you and just appreciate that they're not going to know what you're feeling.
We're going to take a short break. When we come back, more of my conversation with Whoopi Goldberg. Welcome back to All There Is. You wrote something, you said, "I'm not in any rush to go wherever they went, but a lot of days I'm just sort of walking through it, getting where I need to go and doing what I need to do. I had no clue that things would change so dramatically for me once they were gone. Was I so tethered to my mom and brother that I can't find my own bearing? It feels that way. They were my home base, my reality check, because they both knew me from the start. It's not like either one could have done anything about dying. But from time to time, I feel like. Why did you all leave me here?" Yeah, I asked that....
Yeah. Yeah. But the answer to that is because we have stuff we got to get done. That's why. And we're not supposed to. This is not our time. It's not our time. We got kids and grandkids and. They need to know us. They need to know us. That's why it's my belief, you know?
Yeah, yeah. I know it happens. It just happens. Yeah.
Yeah. But yeah, that I find myself asking that question like.
Yeah. Why did you leave me? There were three of us.
I also realize when I ask that that it's very much it's the question like the ten year old me is asking. It's like the angry question of a hard hearted child of like, why did you all leave?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And, you know. I once flirted. Once flirted with thinking about leaving. And then I thought, how, what a terrible thing that would be to do to my kid. To knowingly do to my kid. Who actually likes me. You know? She's a really good person and a fine woman. And she's raise, she and her husband have raised three fine, very bizarre children. And why would you do that to them? Why would you leave them with that? So, yeah. Decided not to. Yeah. Yeah.
I think one thing I learned early on in talking to people, which I would say to me was a revelation, was that you can still have a relationship with the person who's died. I understand my dad in a different way now, and I know him in a different way. And I think there is. It. That really helps me a lot. Feeling that? Yeah. Your mom said to you. She said I looked in the mirror one day. I saw my mother coming out of my shirt. Same will happen to you. She said, Yeah, yeah. And that's that starting to happen. You look in the mirror and you see your mom coming out of your shirt.
I look just like her. I look just like her. And if I can be half the person that she was, I will feel like I honored her the way that I'd like to honor her, you know. Because she she really was that that beacon of light. And she didn't know she was a beacon of light for for me whether she could in a barrel in Coney Island where she couldn't get out because she was laughing too hard. And then we're trying to get her out of the barrel and we're laughing too hard and we're just in a barrel. I see us. I feel us. And I feel the barrel going around and I can see us all laying in that barrel laughing our little behinds off because it was too much fun. We were having fun, you know, going to the Ice Capades. Christmas. My mother made magic.
Your mom would scour the newspapers to see what opportunities there were in the city in the following week that you and Clyde could go to. And there's a museum show and you can go there and then there's She would get you to go see the Beatles. You guys got to see the Beatles.
Clyde didn't. I did. Clyde did not go to see the Beatles. He was a little annoyed, but not too annoyed.
And then there's there's a beautiful story about your mom always want to take you to Disneyland, and one day you surprise her. When things start to happen for you. You start to make some money. You take her for a drive. She doesn't know where you're going. You end up at....
She's annoyed because it's too long a drive. It's too long a drive and just got off the plane. Why? Why are we still in the car? And you know that Sunday night, wonderful world of color, wonderful world of Disney. You know, she would say, "one day I'm going to take you kids to Disneyland." We're like, okay, okay. And she worked her butt off. She did all the things she needed to do to keep us living comfortably in our apartment in Chelsea. And we didn't get to go to Disneyland. And and I got a little money and I thought, okay, I know what I'm going to do. She's coming out to see me and I'm taking her to Disneyland because Disney and still for me, Disney is a huge deal and it meant magical things could happen in the world. I still believe in things like Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I you know, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful. I still believe extraordinary things happen. And so because of that, I, I wanted her to have that experience. So I wanted her to have that magic. And when she passed, I may have taken her to Disneyland and gotten into the Small World Ride. And maybe she's in there.
She was cremated. Yes. She actually she kept saying she wanted to go into the microwave and she really didn't want to be buried in the ground in a grave because she said, I don't want you feeling like you have to go see me in a in some place. Just know I'm here. I'm everywhere. So. Okay.
She's at Disneyland, which I love. And Clyde is also at Disneyland, but he's on Highways and Byways throughout the United States.
Because he loved to drive across the United States.
States and he loved it. I mean, it was.
And did you do that? You like as you drove across the states, you.
I have a bus. No one likes when I drive because I'm I'm.
Here because you're dropping ashes out the.
Window. I'm dropping ashes. And when I'm singing me, I'm singing songs. And so he's all over, you know? And now when I when I sing This land Is Your Land. This Land Is My Land. It actually is.
I had a nanny growing up, and she was very important to me. She was like my mom. Her name was May McLinden. She was Scottish. I always wanted to travel around the world with her and for see the world. And she was cremated and I brought her to a lot of places.
Yeah, it's the you know, it is the joy. Right now we're in this stage where we got to find the joy in all of this. There is light in these tunnels that we're in. There's so much light in these tunnels. And sometimes the tunnel is so small that you're you kind of just going on your knees trying to get through, and then you're able to stand up and go, wow. And you think about the things that you were able to do for people that you loved last night. I asked my mother, what do you want? What would you like? She said, I want an , an ermine coat, a beaver bowler hat with the brush, and I want to travel around the world until I'm tired of traveling. And she did. She wore the beaver bowler hat in an ad for The Gap with my daughter and my daughter's daughter. And the coat she never wore outside. She liked when she was feeling out of sorts. She would go upstairs. She'd grab the coat and she'd drag it down the stairs. And that was that was what she wanted. And she'd drag it around the house. And I thought that smile on her face is worth everything. Everything. And Clyde got to go everywhere he ever wanted to go. Except space. And listen, a lot of people didn't have parents like we had a good, you know, good relationship. And the only suggestion I will give to you is, remember, they had parents, too, and someone spoiled your childhood. Forgive yourself and go forward because people put themselves in trick bags and then they're stuck. And they said they were so bad or they did these things. It's like, yeah, someone did something to them. But you don't have to continue it.
Whoopi Goldberg, thank you.
Anderson Cooper, it was a pleasure.
Next week, I sit down with psychotherapist and author Francis Weller. His book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, is, for me, one of the best books on grief I've ever read. Frances was on the podcast last season, and a few months ago I was really struggling and I reached out to Frances and I told them that I needed help. He and I have been talking nearly every week since and it's been life changing for me. Here's some of our conversation that you'll hear next week. I'm amazed that I'm 57 years old and from the outside, I guess relatively high functioning. I held the job for a long time. And yet as soon as I think about my dad, my voice cracks. I mean, I can't even express it without my voice quavering. Shouldn't I be over this? This was. This was 47 years ago.
To the boy, to your heart, to your soul. Time doesn't matter at all. It's grief that hasn't really fully been honored. There's a request from soul, from grief that says we must honor these losses. If we don't, they really become like a sediment that settles on us and weighs us down.
More from Francis Weller next week on All There Is. And I hope you can check out our new online grief community at CNN.com. Forward slash. All there is you can watch on your desktop, your laptop or iPad or your mobile device. You can find there a video of the would be interview and all future podcast interviews were videotaping them all. You can also communicate with other listeners and leave comments of your own. And here are some of the thousands of powerful voicemails from others who were on the same road as you seen. Ernakulam Forward Slash. All there is. Visit the site and let us know what you think. Thanks so much for listening. All there is is a production of CNN Audio. The show is produced by Grace Walker and Dan Bloom. Our senior producer is Haley Thomas. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is our executive producer. Support from Nick Godsell, Ben Evans, Chuck Hagdad. Charlie Moore, Kerry Rubin, Shimri Sheetrit, Ronnie Bettis, Alex Manesseri, John Dionora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundige.
