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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Our "Think Again" series continues. Today, finding gratitude in grief with Anderson Cooper.
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Basu, Narrating: Anderson Cooper is now the only living member of his nuclear family. When he was 10 years old, his father Wyatt Cooper died of a heart attack. About a decade later, his brother Carter died by suicide. Then, just a few years ago, in 2019, his mother Gloria Vanderbilt died at the age of 95.
Anderson says it's only recently that he's been able to talk about and really process these losses.
Anderson Cooper: I've never really allowed myself to kind of grieve, and here I am, 56 years old and suddenly find myself feeling things that I've never felt before.
Basu, Narrating: Last year, he came out with a podcast called "All There Is," where he talks to celebrities, a physician, a filmmaker as well as writers and other artists about their experiences with death and grief. He's also received hours and hours of voice messages from listeners.
Cooper: Hearing from other people, it's been incredible to realize that there is this ocean of loss out there, and this ocean of sadness and melancholy and people who are just missing other people.
Basu, Narrating: The podcast is Anderson Cooper like you haven't seen him on TV, hosting his show on "CNN." It's intensely personal and raw. You can hear him in the very first episode as he's going through his mother's apartment, coming across things that belonged to his father and his brother, trying to narrate his way through layers of memories and hurt.
[START ALL THERE IS CLIP]
Cooper: So much of this stuff… It's so my mom that I feel like not keeping it is like throwing her memory away.
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Basu, Narrating: Season two of "All There Is" is coming soon. And I wanted to talk to Anderson as part of our "Think Again series" about big life transitions to hear how doing this work has made him think about grief in new ways and the advice he can offer other people who might be struggling with loss.
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Cooper: It's been a lot. I didn't really anticipate making a podcast. I mean, I didn't feel like the world really needed another podcast. But it all just sort of came together quite naturally. I try to think about things like a correspondent, personal things to help me get through stuff, and I narrate myself through events and I was… found myself doing that when I was going through my mom's things and started recording things. And it was an incredibly moving experience to put this together. And it's… The response to it has been really extraordinary in terms of the personal responses from thousands of people. People who stopped me in the street with, you know, not, "Hey, I wanna take a selfie. Stop." It's, "I lost my father six years ago, and, uh, this is what I feel." And it's… You know, one of the listeners of the podcast had left a voicemail in which she was talking about how her husband had died in, um, fighting a wildfire, and that she was talking about being grateful for, I mean, obviously not for his loss, but for the human connections that his loss enabled her to have with other people. And I… That rang very true to me. Um, and it's something I hadn't really thought about. I think grief can feel very lonely and isolating, and it certainly does for me and continues to at times. But that idea that you can connect with another person in those most vulnerable moments and in that sadness or in that whatever it is you're feeling, um, because this is the most universal of human experiences, something that we will all go through. And, um, yeah. So, it's still very, uh… Like, it's hard for me to talk about. Like, my voice is already quavering, which is not… doesn't bode well for the next [CHUCKLES] however long we'll be talking.
Basu: I, um. I'm prepared. I have a tissue box in here newly just in case.
Cooper: Oh, yeah. [CHUCKLES] I should probably have some.
Basu: Um, I mean, listen. I found myself… I was moved to tears many times listening to the first season. You are very vulnerable in this. I mean, I think for people who know you as Anderson Cooper, the journalist, they have watched you travel to conflict zones. They have seen you on TV in moments of national tragedy, speaking to people who have just experienced loss of some kind, and you bring such a tenderness to those conversations. And I guess I just… I recognize something is happening in those moments, and I wonder what you think is happening in those moments.
Cooper: Yeah. I… What I realize now… After my dad's death when I was 10, I set about a course of sort of study on survival. And so, I started taking like survival classes in the wilderness, like monthlong, you know, national outdoor leadership in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Or I spent six months riding in a truck across Sub- Saharan Africa when I was 17, and I started going to wars as a… wanting to be a foreign correspondent on my own with a fake press pass and a camera, you know, when I was 23. And I found, I realized subsequently, a couple of years into going to wars and seeing people at their lowest points and talking to people in the midst of tragedies… You know, I started to see the through line of what I was doing, um, of why I was seeking out the most extreme forms of feeling. Because I had muted my own feelings. I'd muted my own ability to feel anything. And it was only by exposing myself in the most dangerous places, in the most moving places that I could actually feel stuff and learn from other people who were surviving. I wanted to be around other people who spoke the language of loss. And that's been a through line throughout my life. And what doing this podcast sort of made me realize is… You know what? You don't have to go many miles away to find the language of loss. Like, everybody around us has experienced it.
Basu: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what I really like about the series is that there are all these platitudes that we all know about grief. Like, it gets better with time, and it's better to have loved and lost. And your conversations though with your guests go beyond those platitudes. And what you really seem to be doing together is analyzing your grief. And it leads to these observations about loss that honestly feel really fresh to me and comforting in new ways that I didn't really expect. So, I thought we would start with the very first episode in which you are going through your mom's apartment.
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Cooper: This is what always happens. I end up coming over here. I spend like, hours going through stuff thinking I can throw stuff out, and I [CHUCKLES] don't end up not throwing anything out. I mean, a mug of Princeton University from 1987 that my brother had. What do I do with that?
[END ALL THERE IS CLIP]
Basu: What was that like? What was your thought process as you were doing that, going through your mother's apartment after she died?
Cooper: You know, it's something I always knew I would be the one to do this. First of all, I should say, my mom lived in New York City. She had two apartments in the same building. One was the apartment she lived in, and one was an apartment that my dad had used as a writing studio going back into the '70s. And she used that as an art studio. And so, that apartment was something I had spent time in as a child drawing with crayons on the floor while my dad was typing at his desk. And my brother lived there for a time. My brother was living in that apartment, uh, when he died. So, that was an apartment I went to to get a suit for my brother to be buried in. And so, that apartment has a tremendous amount of associations for me and history for me. So, you know, finding myself there for weeks and weeks at a time, going through her stuff… Uh, I was also going through my dad's stuff and going through my brother's stuff, all of which had been packed away, and my mom hadn't had the ability to go through it. So, it… I was just stunned at how overwhelmingly lonely it felt and sad it felt and how overwhelmed I felt. And then, it turns out my mom had left these notes for me, which I didn't know she was doing. There weren't hundreds of them or anything, but there were a couple of notes that… Again, she knew I would be the one going through. And so, in a drawer, I would open, and there'd be sweaters, and there'd be a note. You know, this is what I was wearing when Carter died, um, when my brother killed himself. Or she wrapped up like my dad's three eyeglass cases with his glasses, and in a silk ribbon with a note saying "daddy's glasses." You know, they're still there. I still am going through the boxes of stuff. I've just moved them from… You know, I sold that apartment. I moved them to my basement. So, I have now two basements full of boxes that I'm still… Like, I took a break from it 'cause it was just… I just could not keep doing it for a while. So, they're all still there, and I'm starting to go through them again.
Basu: There was this phrase that you used in that episode that I thought was just so beautiful to describe that loneliness that you're talking about. You said, "I feel like a lighthouse keeper on an empty island." I just thought that was such a lovely bit of imagery to think about, especially you being… I mean, you were describing really being the last member of your immediate family who is alive.
Cooper: Yeah. I found that really, really hard. And it… And talking to Laurie Anderson on one of the episodes of the podcast, I was saying that to her, and you know how I'm the only one who remembers the child that I was at that age, and there's no one left who really remembers that child. And she said to me, "Yeah, that child is dead." And that to me was a revelation. I realized yeah, that's what I'm feeling.
Basu: I should say one of the episodes, you sit down with Stephen Colbert, and I'm so glad that you did, again, because there was that conversation that you two had soon after your mother died that went viral in a lot of ways where you were talking about grief together, of course Stephen Colbert being someone who's experienced a lot of loss, um, early in his life much like you.
Cooper: Yeah, his father was killed in a plane crash, Eastern Airlines plane crash, along with his brothers, Peter and Paul, when Stephen was ten.
Basu: That's right. You've talked before with Stephen about… I mean, he's brought up this quote that he likes from J.R.R. Tolkien. "What punishments of God are not gifts?" And you two return to that. And I can hear in that conversation that you are still in some way struggling to grasp that idea, the, like, the gratitude for the grief or accepting it as a gift in some way. Tell me where your thinking has landed on that.
Cooper: Yeah. When Stephen said that first to me in the conversation, 2019, and it was… I think it was my mom died in mid-June, and I think I talked to him three or four weeks later. I just found it such an extraordinary idea. And it's something I've thought about continually since 2019, and I certainly understand it more now. And I certainly do feel gratitude and gratitude for all the things… I mean, I certainly wish none of them… You know, wish my father hadn't died when he did, and wish my brother hadn't died how he did and when he did, you know, and wished I had been able to speak to him more and open up to him more and help him. But I also do believe, as Stephen has pointed out, that if you want to be the most human, if you want to be the most human you can be, that involves loss and suffering. And it allows you to be more fully human. It allows you to reach out and have connections with people and to understand pain and be able to be empathetic. And it's allowed me to have the life that I've had. It's allowed me to go to places that have been extraordinary for me, um, to bear witness to other, what other people are going through, whether it's Hurricane Katrina, or in Haiti or wherever it may be, and to be able to relate to people from any walk of life in this common bond of grief and loss. And that's a beautiful thing.
Basu: Yeah. I have to say when I… I remember when you first had that conversation with Stephen Colbert in 2019, and since then, for me, I have experienced back-to-back, over the course of the past few years, a few very different type of losses. I lost a friend who was 28 years old, who was really, I was really close to, in a really tragic way that felt, you know, inexplicable and awful. I lost my grandmother, who I was very close to, but I got to spend her last days with her in India, which was an experience that changed my life. And I lost an aunt who I loved deeply to cancer, and she was in her 60s, and it just felt wrong and too early. And I… Listening to this conversation between you and Stephen more recently made me revisit this idea of being grateful for the gift of what loss can give you. I guess it just… I've realized, um, loss just creates, like, dimensions [CHUCKLES] that you didn't realize you had. And I've been very grateful for that, for that being called attention to. It's an awful, awful way to get there. But, um, I guess I just feel like I have so much more capacity than I realized.
Cooper: Hm. What were their names?
Basu: Oh. My friend's name was Yohan. He was such a dear friend to me. We used to get together every single month, um, for a meal and a long chat. Um, and I only realized after he died how many friends he made time for in that really special and close way. My grandmother's name was Sarla, Sarla Basu. And, um, she felt like my lifeline to India. And, um, she always told me when I'm gone, I know that you'll still have a connection to this country 'cause you've developed your own relationship, and that makes me very happy. And it's true. And my aunt's name was Nona. And, uh, she was just… She was just a light. She was happiness personified. And, uh, one of her last messages to me was, um, always be happy, dear. Always be happy. And she was. She was always happy even struggling through cancer.
Cooper: Your face lights up when you talk about them.
Basu: Hm. Yeah. I was gonna say there's also something kind of funny that happens, which is even in life's most joyful moments, sometimes that's when loss comes up. The idea of love and grief and joy and grief being things that are intrinsically linked, and several of your guests have talked about how they had those kind of funny moments in their lives. Do you think that the thinking of these ideas as being linked is somehow helpful?
Cooper: I've noticed the linkage certainly with having kids in that it has, I mean, the joy of that being just incredible, incredible wonderment that comes with that. I mean, there is a pain that comes with it as well, which is you see your own childhood through them, and you see things in them which are like you or like, you know, in my case, like my brother, uh, or my mom, who both my kids look like my brother and my mom at times, look like me at times, my dad. And so, there is incredible beauty in that, and at the same time, a sadness and also sadness of, you know, my kids look at pictures on the wall of my dad or my mom or my nanny, May, or my brother, and, you know, they're not asking questions at this age, but I know those questions will come. And so, there's a sort of a poignancy that they will never have. They won't know these people other than through whatever I tell them about or what they, you know, find out about or read about or learn about. So, yeah. There's great beauty in that. And there's great pain in that as well.
Basu: Yeah. Of course. In the podcast, we get to hear a little bit of you and your mom talking that you recorded at some point, and, uh, we get to hear you realizing that that's where you got your laugh from, from your mom, which is very, very sweet. [CHUCKLES]
Cooper: Yeah. Which I can't… I mean, I cannot believe that I lived my entire life giggling with this ridiculous giggle that I have, um, that has been, you know, occasionally commented upon publicly, uh, by others or noticed, and not realized it was the exact laugh that my mom had. And it was not until I… And I play this in the podcast. I
recorded her in the hospital on the day she found out that she was gonna die. Um, she was laughing. She made fun of herself or something, and she started to giggle. And I start to giggle.
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Anderson Cooper's Mom: Is this all there is?
[GIGGLING]
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Cooper: And we just started to giggle the exact same time that I happened to be recording. And, um, the intonation of it is exactly the same.
Basu: It is like listening in stereo. It is… It's so charming.
Cooper: Yeah. And I cannot… I mean, I literally was like… That was the day I discovered. I was only watching the video later that day that I realized oh my God. That's where this ridiculous laugh comes from.
Basu: [CHUCKLES] That's so sweet.
Cooper: And I can't believe… And I think my brother… Looking back on it now, I always made fun of my brother's laugh, and I realized oh my gosh. That was… He had it, too.
Basu: I think that's the laugh. Yeah. [CHUCKLES]
Cooper: Yeah. So, I love… I mean, I love that. I love, and I love that discovery, you know, and one of the things that, um, in the podcast, uh, a filmmaker named Kirsten Johnson, who I spoke to, said her father has dementia from Alzheimer's. Her mother had died of it previously, and she made this film about him. But one of the things that she introduced to me is this idea that you can still have a relationship with somebody who has died. And you can get to know them in new ways and different ways, and you can become closer to them even in death. And I think that to me was a revelation and a beautiful one.
Basu: Oh, it's a lovely idea. I think so many of us think of those relationships as getting locked in the moment of the death, right?
Cooper: Yeah. Or lost in, you know, the fog of time and… But the idea that, you know, my dad lived till 50. But I know him more now because I have two boys, and he had two boys. And so, I understand more about what was going on in his head, and he and I were so much alike that I feel so much closer to him in that. And that's, uh… Yeah. It's… That is a great blessing and is also… I mean, for anybody who's, you know, missing somebody, um, the idea that, uh, that it's not this static thing that gets cobwebby and fades, that it's… The relationship is dynamic and alive. And, you know, uh, somebody, you know, one other person whose message I recently listened to was, you know, saying that they're just like a breath away. They're just… Uh, they feel like they're just on the other side of the veil. And, um, I like that sort of Victorian notion of a veil.
Basu: And keeping them close.
Cooper: Yeah.
Basu: Yeah. You've talked before about how in your mom's final weeks of her life, you two had some of your best times and your best talks and your best laughs.
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Cooper: We were a good team.
Anderson Cooper's Mom: That's for sure.
Cooper: I love you.
Anderson Cooper's Mom: I love you, sweetheart. You know that.
Cooper: I do.
Anderson Cooper's Mom: Always and forever.
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Basu: I wonder if you could just say a little more about how the knowledge of death and the knowledge of mortality, the looming presence of it, changes what's happening in the room.
Cooper: So, having experienced loss, when my mom turned 91, I was much more conscious of the potential of her dying and the inevitability of her dying. And she'd always been incredibly healthy and larger than life. And I didn't want there to be anything left unsaid between us. I didn't want there to be these questions I have about my dad or about my brother or about like, who they were and what I didn't know about them. And so, you know, my mom loved to talk about herself with me. So, we set about a course of conversation over the… from the day she turned 91 for an entire year, where we would just ask each other questions via email, on the phone. And when the end came several years later, when she was 95, there was nothing left unsaid between us. There was no great mystery that was looming there that I was gonna be looking for in when I was going through her things. And we could just enjoy each other's company and laugh about stuff and make jokes about things and talk about whether she was scared and talk about what she thought was gonna happen. And I mean, that's just an incredible blessing to be able to have that. And, um, yeah. Obviously, to be able to be there at the end is, uh… I mean, it's an extraordinary thing. It's, uh, yeah. I'm very, very grateful for that.
Basu: Yeah. I was with my grandmother at the very end of her life and, um, had spent some days there at her bedside just kind of curled up next to her and just, um, in the room, and even if she didn't wanna talk, just kind of talking, um, playing music that she loved. And, uh, it's strange what happens, um, in those moments. I didn't plan some big thing. I didn't know what I wanted to say to my grandmother in those final days. I found myself saying some things that really surprised me that I didn't realize were on my mind. And I remember you saying in one of these episodes that you urge people to record someone they love. Can you say more about that? Why do you think it's so great to have recorded the voice of somebody you love?
Cooper: You know, my dad, he was in the hospital for about a month or so, I think, before he died. And he knew he was gonna die, um, I think, and he wanted us to get some tape recorders that he could make messages. And I, you know, my mom was upset, and I just… It wasn't a priority, and she didn't do it. And I think by the time we got around to doing it, he could no longer speak, and it was too late. And it was only a couple years ago that somebody had found an old radio interview that my dad had given on a public radio station to a radio interviewer named Charles Ruas, and some organization restored it, put it online, and Charles Ruas reached out to me and said I interviewed your dad, and this has been put online, and here it is. And suddenly, I heard my dad's voice. And someone else reached out to me after doing the podcast and had tracked down another recording of my dad, which they then sent to me, which was an incredible thing to hear. So, the power of hearing my dad's voice after, you know… I, what, I was probably 50 when I heard it. And I hadn't heard it since I was 10 years old. And so, I just think if you can, if somebody is willing to talk about their life, a grandparent, your parent or whomever, to sit down, and… Yeah. I'm even doing it with my sons now. 'Cause I, like, I will occasionally sit down and record and just ask them questions about like, what they think of things, and, you know, they're… [CHUCKLES] it goes around in circles, and some of it's nonsensical, but it's something which I'll be able to look back on, and they'll be able to look back on their entire lives. And it's not just a funny video of them being a sweet three-year-old. It's watching them think and watching them figure out how to answer something and…
Basu: And listening to you enjoy that, which is gonna mean a lot to them.
Cooper: Yeah. So, I mean, I think that idea as somebody who grew up longing to have a dad, um, present and alive in my life and, you know, longing to… You know, what I would give to like, hear my dad's parents speaking on a tape recorder or my mom's parents speaking on a tape recorder. I mean, it would be just extraordinary. And I'm a big believer when somebody dies to start writing down everything you can remember about them because you think you're gonna remember all this stuff for always, but it goes away very, very quickly. But I just think for all of us to be able to have those sounds and images if you can. It's incredible. And even if it's not for you, for, you know, your kids who, when they're older and able to have, you know, documentation of me telling them all the things I would want to tell them if I was alive. And I wrote this book with my mom, and she and I did the audio recording of this book and of this yearlong conversation we had. And, you know, I didn't have kids then, but I knew I was going to have kids, and part of it was wanting to have them have my mom's voice, um, because when I did finally hear my dad's voice after 40 years, in that radio interview, he was talking about me, and he was talking about my brother and what he hoped for us. And that was… [SHAKILY BREATHES] So, even this podcast, uh, that I've done, um, even the podcast I've done really is for them. And yeah. So, um…
Basu: What a gift.
Cooper: Yeah. I hope so.
Basu: What a gift to give your kids.
Cooper: Yeah. But hopefully, you know, I'll be around. They won't have to listen to it.
Basu: [CHUCKLES] Or they can listen to it and try comparing their laugh to yours and see if they can figure out why they laugh the way they do.
Cooper: [CHUCKLES] Yeah. I know, and their laughs are so, are perfect as they are. Thankfully, they don't sound like a chicken being strangled.
Basu: [CHUCKLES] You mentioned, um… You mentioned early in our conversation how so many people struggle with what to say when somebody else has experienced a loss. And I wonder through all these conversations if you feel like you've arrived at some helpful ideas around what is nice to hear.
Cooper: One of the things somebody pointed out to me and is absolutely true is rarely does anyone ever say their name. And rarely does anyone ever ask their name. And I think to me, that idea of asking somebody the name of their loved one, to me, that's become really important. Often the questions that people ask when you say, "Oh, my brother died when I was 21." Something I might say… Rarely does somebody say, "Oh, what was your brother's name?" Or sometimes they'll say, "Were you close?" And that's a question that's always been really hard for me because I don't know how to answer that question given the way he died and the shock of it. Um, but also, many other times, people ask questions about sort of around the edges of like, "Well, what did they die of? How old were they?" All of them are natural questions, but the impression that a lot of people get when they hear those questions, it's… The listener is trying to decide how important this loss was for you, or how important it should be for you. Like, "Oh, they were 95? Okay." So, that makes sense. So, it's sort of a way of like putting in a file that makes sense for the other person who's listening. I think those are all natural questions and questions I generally probably would've asked. But now, I tend to just ask more questions about not the permutations of the death itself, but about the details of somebody's life. So, what was their name? What were they like? What did you guys do together? What did you enjoy doing with each other?
Basu: And those are actually the answers that lead you toward the light in those relationships, rather than the sadness and the darkness, the circumstances or something.
Cooper: Yeah. Which is not to say like, if somebody wants to talk about what they died of, that totally makes sense as well. And I certainly don't wanna portray that I'm some evolved human being who now knows what to say. I've been in situations where I haven't said any… in the past where I haven't said anything where I know somebody has lost somebody, and I have not said anything about it and thinking like, oh, it's awkward. You know, I don't know if I should bring it up. You know, one of the things Stephen Colbert has said, um, was I'm surprised people aren't asking me about Peter and Paul every day 'cause it's on my mind. I'm thinking about it, them every day. And, you know, I think about my brother, his death, every day. I think about his life every day, my dad. And so, not saying anything doesn't certainly doesn't help either.
Basu: Well, I will self-report that when you just asked me the names of the people that I have lost recently, I was really surprised, and it kind of made me realize I hadn't said their names out loud in a little while.
Cooper: And no one ever does.
Basu: Yeah. Thank you for asking. I've been thinking a lot about the, um, little bits of advice that feel very practical. Record your loved one's voice. Or as you just said, uh, try writing down everything that you can remember. I wonder if there's any other practical pieces of advice that you've gathered along the way about how to help in times of grief.
Cooper: I mean, I think there's help others, and there's help yourself. And the thing I do realize now, which I intellectually knew before but poo-pooed and thought well, I'm bigger than that, and I can just barrel ahead, is the idea of you have to feel all these things. Like, you have to feel it, and you can't… You can try to bottle it up. You can try to push it down. It doesn't go away. And it doesn't go away if you don't… It never goes away. But it doesn't sort of lessen and become a healthier form of grief if you don't allow yourself to feel the sadness and feel the loss. And that is so clear to me in ways that I never realized until I did this podcast. And I can't wait to see what I can learn and what we can all learn in this next season because I desperately need to learn it.
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Basu: Well, I'm really looking forward to season two. Anderson, it was a pleasure to speak with you about this, really.
Cooper: Thanks. It was really nice talking to you.
Basu, Narrating: You can find the podcast "All There Is" with Anderson Cooper on Apple Podcasts. We'll include a link for you on our show notes page.
Next week, for the final episode in our "Think Again" series, I revisit a conversation I had earlier this year with "LA Times" columnist Steve Lopez about the spiritual and emotional transition to retirement.
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Steve Lopez: My work is very much a part of my identity. But I fear that I have not explored other potential identities. Maybe there are mes that I haven't met.
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Basu, Narrating: Don't miss that episode. Be sure to follow "Apple News In Conversation" in Apple Podcasts.
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