Pod Insights All There Is with Anderson Cooper Patti Smith: The ‘Sacred Wounds’ of Grief About this episode Singer, poet, author Patti Smith has experienced the deaths of her husband, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith, her brother Todd, and her lifelong friend and artistic soulmate, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Time doesn’t heal those "sacred wounds," she tells Anderson, but in time, you can learn to navigate it more.
Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Chuck Hadad, Grace Walker, Emily Williams Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher
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Transcript 6,299 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Anderson Cooper? This past Monday was the anniversary of my dad's death, January 5th. It's one of those dates on the calendar that I've always dreaded. I'm guessing you have them too. Death days, birthdays, holidays, where the ache of loss is especially deep. I mentioned that dread on the New Year's Eve broadcast we did from Times Square a couple of days ago, and I was stunned and moved by the response. Here's what I said that night.
0:25 Speaker 01 I started volunteering to work on New Year's Eve 20 something years ago because since I was a kid, I've actually dreaded this night. And I think a lot of you may be out there watching, or watching it through different eyes than some of the people in this crowd. December 31st, 1977, I watched this ball drop at home with my brother Carter. I was 10, my dad was in the hospital, we knew it was bad, but not how bad. I remember this night, all those years ago, watching Dick Clark and all the shots of the crowd that you're seeing right now, all the merriment and the people together, and I never felt so alone. My dad died five nights later, and my brother 10 years after that.
1:06 Speaker 01 And I mention this tonight because some of you watching right now, maybe a lot of you watching tonight, may see all these crowds and the merriment and feel alone, even if there are others around you. Maybe someone you love is sick, or they've already crossed that mysterious threshold we know virtually nothing about, and you long to see them, or hear them, or feel them again. And maybe it's your dad who's died, or your sibling, or your mom, or your spouse, or your partner, or your child, perhaps it's a beloved animal, maybe it's your job, your health, your hope that's gone. I just want you to know that in the midst of all of this, which is not really real, what you are feeling is, and you are not the only one. You may feel alone tonight, but you are not alone.
1:50 Speaker 01 Mary Laikinen is watching tonight, right now, maybe in her son Ian's room. He died of glioblastoma. "Ian, I've got you," she told him, and she did, every day of her life, and his, and his. Ian died in her arms, and I'm thinking about you, Mary, and Ian tonight. And Susan Heim is watching right now. And this is her son Charlie. And this is Charlie a couple of years ago, watching this very broadcast, watching Andy and me. And I love these pictures because Charlie with us in the background is laughing and he's smiling and he had special needs. And Susan cared for him every day of his life for 17 years. And Charlie died this summer in her arms as well.
2:33 Speaker 01 Susan told me she doesn't want this year to end because it's the last year that Charlie was alive. Susan, I'm thinking of you and Charlie tonight, and I'm thinking of all of you watching with perhaps the same fear or sadness that I watched with all those years ago and still feel on this night even right now. I'm thinking of Mariko O'Mara and Chrissy Kay and Janis Allen and so many more. So wherever you are in the world or in your grief, you are not alone. You are here with us and I am grateful that we are together.
3:06 Anderson Cooper? Millions of people watched that or have seen it now online. It's been reposted a lot and I've received tens of thousands of direct messages and comments about it. So many of them are deeply personal and moving and I wish I could respond to all of you who reached out. The response just affirms my conviction that none of us is alone in our sadness. It is a bond that connects us with unseen strands of longing and love. This is All There Is. We'll be right back with my guest on the podcast today, singer, writer, poet and artist, Patti Smith. Welcome back to All There Is. My guest is legendary rock musician, writer, poet, Patti Smith.
3:48 Anderson Cooper? She burst into the punk rock movement in the mid 1970s with her first album, Horses. She's had such a remarkably creative career ever since. It's really impossible to catalog.
4:04 Anderson Cooper? She's a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her 2010 memoir, Just Kids, about her relationship with artist and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, won the National Book Award. Her latest book, out now, is Bread of Angels, A Memoir. I spoke to Patty one day after the anniversary of her husband and guitarist Fred Sonic Smith's death. He died in 1994 on Robert Mapplethorpe's birthday. Mapplethorpe died due to complications from AIDS in 1989. And Patty's brother, Todd Smith, died a month after her husband. Do you feel, do you feel grief now?
4:40 Speaker 02 I feel, you know, it's a ride. I mean, I think it's something, loss is something you have to navigate. It doesn't, it's not a thing where time heals all wounds. It's just in time you learn to navigate it more, because nothing really heals. It's, they're sacred wounds. They're not going to heal.
5:02 Anderson Cooper? They're sacred wounds?
5:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, you just, you learn to live with them. This time of the year has always been difficult. My husband, yesterday was his passing day. It's Robert Mapplethorpe's birthday. So it's a, the date is fraught for me. And some years, it's extremely painful. This year, I don't know, I just felt happiness that I knew them both. I was just happy. A couple of years ago, I had such a terrible bout of like, almost horror, that these people are gone, that my husband is never coming back, that I could almost couldn't get out of bed.
5:44 Speaker 02 So I just accept that some years, the wound is, you know, vibrating and other, other years were fine.
5:52 Anderson Cooper? Robert Mapplethorpe died 1989.
5:55 Speaker 02 Eighty-nine.
5:56 Anderson Cooper? He was 42 years old.
5:57 Speaker 02 And then...
5:58 Anderson Cooper? Your husband, Fred.
5:59 Speaker 02 Fred, and then my brother and...
6:01 Anderson Cooper? Fred died in 1994. He was 44. And your brother was a month later at 42 years old.
6:07 Speaker 02 Yeah. Fred had just died, and my brother and I decided I was going to leave Michigan, live, stay with him, with the kids, and he would help me raise the kids and just, we would, you know, live our life.
6:23 Speaker 02 And then a month later, he just died. And it was completely out of the blue. He was only forty-two, and he had a massive heart attack.
6:33 Anderson Cooper? He was wrapping a present for his daughter.
6:35 Speaker 02 A Christmas present for his daughter. And he was alone. And that that still is so hard for me, and I miss him so much. And in that period of my life, I also had another child. So it was a period of both birth and loss. And it was just, it was a difficult, more than difficult. But I'm just, the fact that now, when I look at my life, that I knew these people, and they were such an important part of my life, that they loved me, is a, it's, it's a beautiful thing. I think also being, you know, I'll be seventy-nine, and we evolve, you know? We go through so much, or so much pain, or so much loss,
7:18 Speaker 02 that it's almost becomes a philosophic part of existence. It's different.
7:25 Anderson Cooper? Your perspective now, the age you are, is different than it was even ten years ago.
7:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, and also, the, the amount of, the pain isn't so hard to bear. It's just almost like I can like, sit, sit back and watch it.
7:43 Anderson Cooper? It's not that it's not there, but you have a, either a distance or a perspective on it that allows you to see it.
7:50 Speaker 02 I think, and also, my father was much like that. My father was very philosophic, and I feel more and more like him as I get older. And I can look at things, and I don't take things personally. And people would say to me, "All these bad things happened to you." And I said, "No, they didn't happen to me, they happened to others. But they're in my realm." But I just still feel I'm grateful to be here.
8:17 Anderson Cooper? Hmm. I heard you say something. You said, "It isn't that the dead don't speak. It's that we forget how to listen," which is a quote from, from Pasolini.
8:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:25 Anderson Cooper? The Italian filmmaker.
8:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:26 Anderson Cooper? I love that. I hadn't heard that before.
8:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I, I think of that all the time. I think of that constantly.
8:33 Anderson Cooper? What does that mean to you? "It isn't that the dead don't speak. It's that we forget how to listen."
8:36 Speaker 02 Well, we have the ability to channel things. You know, some people think that channeling is a very mystical thing or shamanistic thing, and perhaps it is, but I found it, it's a part of my own existence. But you have to let things come into you. You can't clutter it up with your own thoughts. I'm not a meditator or anything. I'm not good at that. But I can sort of like empty myself and allow things to come to me. When I first came back to New York after I lost my husband and brother, and I had to go back to work to make a living, um, one day I was walking,
9:20 Speaker 02 and I can remember this so much. I was walking and I felt so bad. Sorry, I, I can tell you. I've, I just felt is low and is just, I don't, I, it was just the, the most terrible thing because I'm not subject to depression. So, but as much as that could be, and I was walking and all of a sudden I felt this warmth in my heart. It was so warm and so I could almost see a red glow and it scared me at first. Like I thought, am I having a heart attack?
10:00 Speaker 02 And at first I resisted it and then I relaxed and then it sort of spread through me and I felt so much love.
10:10 Speaker 02 And I almost started, I felt just happy and I, I remember stopping and I thought, "It's Toddy." It was my brother. I could feel him. It was the sense of him. That's the way he was. He was my knight always. He believed in me and I, I could feel him. And I just remember standing there, smiling, just by myself, stand there, smile, and I knew it was him.
10:36 Anderson Cooper? Was that the first time you had felt him since he died?
10:39 Speaker 02 I mean, I could sense him or I would, you know, dream about him.
10:43 Anderson Cooper? But actually feel?
10:45 Speaker 02 That was, and it was probably like a year after he died. But it was so, I just said it out loud, "It's Toddy." I knew it was him.
10:56 Anderson Cooper? Now that I have started to, you know, turn toward what I've been running from my entire life, I feel my dad for the first time and it's incredible. Like, I feel him and I feel like you can still have a relationship with somebody who's died.
11:13 Speaker 02 Absolutely, absolutely, I believe that.
11:15 Anderson Cooper? To me, that is, one of the greatest gifts I've gotten is this knowledge, you can have a relationship with somebody who has died and your relationship can grow and change even though they're gone.
11:26 Speaker 02 Absolutely, I totally believe that. I mean, I think of Fred, my kids were seven and 12. And we have kept him with us in every way. Humorously, sad, angry, everything, we talk about him. We know he would hate the internet. He was a very private person. We think, "Well, glad dad wasn't around to see that." And, "Oh, we'd love that car." Whatever it is, we talk about him. He's part of our daily conversation. And it's also like with my mother. My mother and I have improved our relationship since she was gone.
12:06 Anderson Cooper? Really?
12:07 Speaker 02 Especially, yeah, all the things, as I get older, I appreciate her more and more.
12:13 Anderson Cooper? Do you still talk to, to your mom, to your dad?
12:17 Speaker 02 Well, my mom talks to me, that's for sure.
12:19 Anderson Cooper? What does she say?
12:21 Speaker 02 You know, telling me I should get my hair cut or would it be nicer or, or she's excited about something or she'll want to know how Richard Gere is. She was, she was very fond of him. And it was just funny things, nothing...
12:37 Speaker 02 Deeply serious, sometimes just comforting me. The more I go through in life, see what it's like to have children, to see your children leave, your children grow, I understand her so much more, admire her so much more, and tell her about it. It's almost like we still have coffee together.
12:59 Anderson Cooper? Yeah, I understand my dad more because I now have two little kids.
13:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
13:03 Anderson Cooper? And I know what he was thinking when he looked at my brother and I, just as what I'm thinking. It's the same I'm thinking when I look at my sons.
13:13 Speaker 02 Oh.
13:14 Anderson Cooper? Yeah, it's lovely.
13:14 Speaker 02 Yeah. It's just, also, you had things to process that I had terrible things and terrible losses, but nothing, I mean, what your mother had to process and the way you lost your brother.
13:27 Anderson Cooper? Yeah.
13:28 Speaker 02 And also, from a 10-year-old boy, my son was 12, and I know being stoic is part of being a boy. It's completely natural that you wouldn't feel what you would feel later in life, because first of all, you have to protect yourself as a child. I had two childhood friends who died, all before I was seven. I didn't cry for any of them. I saw my dog killed right in front of me at 11 years old. Never had another dog. I still love that dog, but I don't remember even crying, because you were a soldier in a way, you know?
14:11 Anderson Cooper? Do you remember when you first did cry?
14:16 Speaker 02 No. Actually, that's an interesting question. I cried when I read books. I remember crying reading The Prince and the Pauper. What I learned to do was develop a realm where these disappeared people would dwell.
14:34 Anderson Cooper? Like a fantasy realm?
14:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was like a heaven that wasn't that high up, so you could sort of live with them. And that way of thinking really has carried me through life, because I still sort of have that. I have that realm where my people are. I feel them close to me, and I can walk with them, or sometimes almost ask them to help me with something, or...
15:02 Anderson Cooper? You said once, "If we keep ourselves open, they will come."
15:07 Anderson Cooper? Can you explain?
15:07 Speaker 02 Well, it's like everything, like the muse or with God. It's like we imagine prayer is like talking to God, talking, talking, talking, petitioning, asking. But if you just, you know, think of it the other way and just sort of open yourself, why shouldn't God or the angels talk to you? Why, if we keep talking, we're not listening, we're not opening ourselves to feel them? Like that day I felt my brother. I feel that we could feel anything, elves and fairies, and I'll take it. I'm still open and.
15:45 Anderson Cooper? Have they come?
15:47 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, I've had a few visitations. Like writing, you know, you have a terrible bout where nothing, it's like almost like your brain shuts down and all your cells shut down. Like I'm having a rough patch right now. I haven't written like in three months or something. But instead of being like tortured about it, like when I was younger, I just think, okay, it'll happen, just cool out.
16:14 Anderson Cooper? When your brother died, you went to the funeral home, I think with your sister.
16:20 Speaker 02 Well, he arrived in a body bag and we were at the funeral home and they had laid him out and there was a cloth over him and we were sitting with him.
16:32 Speaker 02 And we were like, could hardly even speak. We were so, you know, brokenhearted. But the way they had him, his hands must have been folded over his private parts and the sheet was sort of sticking out there. And at the same moment, we both noticed it and I said, I'm hoping that's his hands.
16:59 Speaker 02 And we both started laughing.
17:03 Speaker 02 But to understand this, Linda, Tati and I, what we were punished the most for was uncontrollable, triple laughter. We would all start laughing and wouldn't be able to stop. And my mother would yell at us and tell us to stop laughing. We could not, and then we could be punished. And I was distraught over Fred. I could hardly bear to smile and leave it to my brother. We could not stop laughing. And the guy in the funeral home guy thought we were moaning and crying out. And he said, are you two all right? And we're going, yep, we're all right. We were just laughing so much. But it was like, I could imagine that people would think that was terrible,
17:47 Speaker 02 that we're sitting with our dead brother laughing. But for us, it just showed that we still had it. We still had the ability to get into that Tati, Linda and Patty frame of mind where we could laugh enough to get punished. And I always say to people, grief does not mean crying and sobbing. That's part of it. It could be wailing. I mean, I feel like I've done it all, but it's not required. Nothing is required because grief isn't just like the person dies and you grieve and you go to the funeral and then it's over. It's going to last your whole lifetime. It's going to come and go in waves.
18:29 Anderson Cooper? I just talked to Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker. And he said the half-life of grief is endless.
18:36 Speaker 02 That's beautiful. And I completely, I can comprehend that. And it is. The real thing is people should not feel that it's wrong to feel joy in the center of grief. We have to be able to go through the whole spectrum. It's part of being alive. We have to find a balance for all of that.
18:57 Anderson Cooper? I've also come to the realization that I've muted my life by not allowing myself to feel grief and feel sadness, to feel a deep, deep sadness.
19:07 Speaker 02 If you're muting one part of yourself, it's going to also mute somewhat of the other. You're keeping in the safe zone. Which some people might need to do because they experience deep depression, because they have clinical depression, because they can't allow themselves to enter certain realms. But if your mental health is good, I think it's important to feel everything, to feel guilt, to feel anger. It's important to know what all of these things taste like.
19:42 Anderson Cooper? We're going to take a short break. A quick reminder, my new live, interactive show, All There Is Live, now airs every other Thursday night on our Grief Community page, cnan.com/allthereis. You can join us there at 9:15 PM next Thursday, January 15th, for more conversations about grief with podcast listeners. We'll be right back with more from Patti Smith.
20:05 Speaker 03 I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. We're going to talk about rethinking how we die. How we think about death in the first place greatly informs how we live. Our guest is Dr. B.J. Miller. He's a hospice and palliative care physician.
20:23 Speaker 04 We are aging as a people. This is a worldwide phenomenon that we are aging and therefore getting closer to the end of life on some level as a group. It's not at all surprising that you'll see a revving up of interests, services, and also sort of anxiety that pushes us away from the subject and makes us cling to life.
20:44 Speaker 03 Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.
20:52 Anderson Cooper? Welcome back to my conversation with Patti Smith. I spoke to Patti on the day after photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's 79th birthday. He died of complications from AIDS in 1989 at the age of 42. Patti and Mapplethorpe met in 1967, when both were 20 and still aspiring artists in New York City. They went on to become lifelong friends and artistic soulmates.
21:15 Speaker 02 Robert was my first major, major loss. In the string of losses that I was about to go through, Robert was the first. He was only 42. When I think of myself, what I've accomplished since 42, my greatest accomplishments were really in my late 50s and 60s, as a writer at least. And Robert, he had so much work, so many visions, so much to do, so much capability. And what I mourn is like, I know what he wanted to do. I feel the pain of incompletion. I could imagine what he would have done.
21:59 Anderson Cooper? The spark between you two, was it instantaneous?
22:05 Speaker 02 It was, it was always humanistic. Like, it wasn't a sexual thing or anything. There was something alchemical between us. Robert and I were like two artists who believed in one another. We were the same age, we were only two months apart. I met him when he was 20. I was trying to find a place to stay and I was looking for some people. I went to their old apartment. They didn't live there anymore. And the guy that answered the door said, "Well, ask my roommate. He's in that room, he might know where they live." I opened the door and there's this boy. He's lying on this little white iron bed, asleep, with all these shepherd boy curls.
22:48 Speaker 02 And I was just looking at him. And he, it's like he sensed that someone was there and opened his eyes and smiled.
23:00 Speaker 02 And that, it was like, it was like an instant welcoming. And our whole life was built on that smile. The last time I saw him alive, he was, oh my God, he was suffering. It was inhuman what he was suffering at the end of his life. And I spent a day with him and he was able to calm. He didn't cough so much. We were alone. And he said, "Patty, I'm dying." And I knew I was never gonna see him again. Because I had to go back to Detroit. He was gonna go to Boston for some new treatment. And he fell asleep and I waited.
23:41 Speaker 02 And then I had to go and I was almost to the elevator. And I just wanted to look at him one more time. And I went back and he was still sleeping and I stood there. And I swear to you, he opened his eyes and smiled. So my first and last image of Robert was that welcoming smile and everything else in between. And it was the symmetry. It was like a blessing, you know. Sorry.
24:19 Anderson Cooper? No, it's lovely. I heard you say, I think it was after Robert's death, that you went to the ocean. You went to the beach. And we had another guest on, Andrew Garfield. His mother died of cancer and when she was sick, he talked about going to the beach. I had read something he had said and I read it to him and then he talked about it. So I just want to play that for you. You said, "As soon as my full body and head were submerged, it was like I got the medicine and my chest released and I let it all go. My interpretation of that moment was that it was the wisdom of nature, the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of the ocean, letting me know, hey, yeah, it's hard, it's horrible. I'm not taking away this unique pain you're feeling, but just so you know, us out here,
25:04 Anderson Cooper? us water molecules, we've been seeing this for millennia. And actually, this is the best case scenario for you to lose her rather than for her to lose you. This is a much better situation. And again, my ego was holding on. My ego thought I knew better. My ego said, no, this doesn't make sense. No, no, no, it should be this way, it should be that way. But actually, it took the ocean, the greater opponent, to just hold me under and say, it's really horrible. And sons have been..."
25:28 Speaker 02 Hmm.
25:35 Anderson Cooper? And sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years, and they will continue to. And you've just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. Some illusion has been lifted. You're in a realer version of the world now, and it's painful.
25:51 Speaker 05 Thank you for connecting with your heart. And I know that it's true. We have to ask to be helped in these moments. Otherwise, we don't get any medicine. We don't get the help. We have to be in enough pain and enough longing to say, "Help me." And only with that, with collaborating in that way, with approaching the mystery in that way of, with all that vulnerability and with all that confusion and with all that lostness, do we get any kind of answer, I think.
26:33 Speaker 05 And I think the answer is relative to the question and the willingness to ask the question and the willingness to not know the answer. So I think the only thing I can take credit for in terms of receiving that information was I allowed myself to feel broken. I just allowed myself to be in pain. And I didn't run away from it. I ran towards it, and I said, "Help me." And the ocean had a great answer, a really tremendous answer.
27:04 Speaker 02 Well, it answers the question about channeling, too, or like listening and opening himself. He heard what the sea had to say to him. Fred took me to the ocean because, I mean, Robert was such a part of my consciousness.
27:23 Speaker 02 I was seeing him everywhere. I dreamed of him constantly. I actually saw him like a hologram, sitting in a chair while I was folding laundry. That's how much he was around. I didn't know even what it was. I mean, it's a form of grief, but it was also, I was haunted, really. I couldn't get him out of my sightline. I couldn't get him out of my mind. And in going to the sea, the sea is so vast and it's pure and it's bigger than us. I liked the way he said, "Sons have been losing their mothers." And it's been happening all through time.
28:02 Speaker 06 And the sea has seen it all. And it's philosophic, but empathetic and welcoming. But you could drown in it.
28:12 Anderson Cooper? It's like grief.
28:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, you can drown in it or be cleansed by it. That was very nice. Thank you for playing it for me.
28:19 Anderson Cooper? The song you wrote for Fred, it's on the album Gone Again. It's called Farewell Reel. And I just want to play a little bit of that.
28:29 Speaker 06 Oh, OK.
28:33 Speaker 06 This little song is for Fred.
28:36 Speaker 06 It's G, C, D, and D minor.
28:59 Speaker 06 It's been a hard time and when it rains, it rains on me.
29:07 Speaker 06 The sky just opens and when it rains, it pours.
29:15 Speaker 06 I'm walking on a salted, it seems, by tears from heaven. And darling, I can't help thinking those tears are yours.
29:40 Speaker 06 Our wild love came from above and wowed us still. Is the wind that howls like a voice that knows it's gone?
29:56 Speaker 06 'Cause darling, you died and when I cry, but I can't buy. So good, I love it, send you a smile and move on.
30:23 Speaker 02 Sorry.
30:24 Anderson Cooper? It's beautiful.
30:25 Speaker 02 I haven't heard it in years. I don't lis-- I never, I rarely listen to myself, so.
30:30 Anderson Cooper? You don't have to say sorry. As Frances Weller says, "Those cheers are holy."
30:40 Speaker 02 It's so sad. But also optimistic.
30:47 Anderson Cooper? It's stunningly sad.
30:50 Speaker 02 Okay. I'm having a Barbara Walters, Barbara Walters moment. That's right. It was nice to hear it. It's just heartbreaking, heartbreaking, really. Also, my guitar playing. The last thing Fred, you know, at the end of his life, he taught me a few chords, enough to write that song. You know, I'm not a musician at all, but I, you know, he was not well. And so he, he spent a lot of time teaching me these chords. And that's what I did with them. But I--
31:29 Anderson Cooper? I love it.
31:30 Speaker 02 That song, I mean, that was a very raw record. And encompassed in that little song is the immediacy, almost, of what happened. It's also, I remember so much, you know, every line writing that. And they're all like, I don't know, I don't know how to express it. They're true. Every line in that is true.
31:55 Anderson Cooper? There's a purity to it. That's the word I can't--
31:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, it's just true. It's just in the song, you know? What really happened is, it's there. So it's not like it causes pain. It's just recognition, I guess, because it's a true song. And it was yesterday. Yesterday was his passing day. I didn't cry yesterday. So actually, I'm happy to shed a few tears today. So that's nice.
32:20 Anderson Cooper? You wrote something that really struck me. You wrote, "Everyone is dead. All is forgotten echoes a voice. I inventory those still with me. I go no further than the face of my sister, innocent yet all-knowing. So long as she is here, our memories are insured. But what of the future when we are both gone?" It's something I think about a lot. Being the last one left from the little family that I grew up in, I find it great weight being the last one left and sort of the
32:51 Anderson Cooper? the holder of these memories. And like I'm, like my basement is still full of stuff that I'm trying to organize and photographs and trying to kind of make sense of it. But I also sort of, I feel like I need to preserve it because if, you know, if I throw these things out or they disappear, then all of us or all of them disappear.
33:18 Speaker 02 Well, that's why in the book I also talk about the shedding process. I have a lot of treasured things. Some of them are real treasures, like a letter of Emily Dickinson's. But then there's the other things, my father's favorite golf ball, the kid's baby teeth and my books, which, you know, the books I had since I was six years old. I look at my copy of Pinocchio and I think, I've loved this book for over 70 years. And I'm not going to be buried with my copy of Pinocchio. I mean, what's going to happen? But I'm, but I know that I'm going to have to say goodbye to it someday.
33:58 Speaker 02 I'm trying to train myself to start giving things away, sharing them or just stepping back from my attachment with them. Very hard for me, but I have to take deep breaths because I know that I'm going to get to a point where I can only choose a couple of them or maybe say to my daughter, can you bury me with my wedding ring and this little box, you know? It's all going to come down to that.
34:29 Anderson Cooper? I ask everybody in the podcast, is there something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful for others?
34:36 Speaker 02 Well.
34:40 Speaker 02 The main thing I would just tell people is allow yourself all the different things that you feel in losing somebody. You do crazy things when you lose somebody, like go shopping. Like, all of a sudden, you just leave the house and buy something expensive, or do something that out of character. Or don't judge yourself. Let yourself be angry, or let yourself not feel anything. Don't feel guilty. Just allow your, all your cells
35:18 Speaker 02 and all of your being to go through its process. I mean, I cried more for Fred years after he died. It was like, I was in such shock, losing him, and I had so much responsibility, and I had two young children, and financially, we were at an all-time low. And then my brother died a month later. So, a lot of the things that I felt, you know, were more intense years later.
35:50 Anderson Cooper? And that's okay?
35:51 Speaker 02 Yeah. There's no rules. There's, and there shouldn't be any rules. And there's all of these phrases, like, "Time heals all wounds." It doesn't. Don't look, don't look to be healed. You have a sacred wound, take care of it. Don't let it get infected. But it's not necessarily going to heal. You just learn to live with it.
36:12 Anderson Cooper? There's no rules in grief?
36:14 Speaker 02 No, I don't think there should be. People expect people to cry when somebody dies. That's wrong. There's no telling how people, people even nervously laugh when somebody dies, that they care about. They don't know why they do that. I don't judge anyone by their behavior.
36:36 Speaker 02 I've heard people judge children because they were playing. When we lost a little boy in our neighborhood, he was only four. I think I was six. And there was a wake in the house and he was in his little coffin. And the cartoons came on and we put them on and we just rolled it. It was a big TV that was on wheels and rolled it over so he could watch cartoons with us. We weren't sitting around crying. That's how we processed it. We watched cartoons with him. Did that mean we were heartless? I think that people just have to. They have to process things in their own way and they shouldn't be hard on themselves.
37:18 Speaker 02 It's hard enough to lose someone without judging how you're, you know, reacting to it.
37:26 Anderson Cooper? Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.
37:29 Speaker 02 I really feel grateful to have, even though it was shedding tears. It's like the word shedding. It's not just crying. It's shedding. The tears are within us. You shed them and they'll, ah, I feel like that was, that was a good thing.
37:51 Anderson Cooper? That was lovely. Thank you.
37:52 Speaker 02 Thanks. Thank you.
37:54 Anderson Cooper? Patti Smith's new book, Bread of Angels, a memoir, is out now. My guest on the next episode of the podcast is novelist Ye Yuen Lee. She's an extraordinary writer who's experienced the death of both of her sons, both of whom died by suicide. Her 16-year-old son Vincent died in 2017 and her remaining child, James, killed himself when he was 19 in 2024. You don't use the word grief. You talk about the abyss.
38:21 Speaker 07 Yes. I use abyss as a, as the precise word to describe how I feel about my life is I'm in an abyss.
38:30 Anderson Cooper? You're in it right now.
38:31 Speaker 07 Yes. And we will always be in this abyss because we'll always be parents who have lost two children. And nothing in life is going to change that. So I don't want to say I want to get out of this abyss. What I want to do is to live in this abyss a little better. So it doesn't feel abysmal. Each person lives in his or her own abyss. So, yes, I am in the abyss and I never want to go out. I don't think it's possible to get out.
39:06 Anderson Cooper? Though it's painful.
39:07 Speaker 07 It is painful. One wants to hold on to these memories, however painful they are. People always think pains are not good. There's nothing good or bad about pains. They're just facts. They're the facts in your life.
39:22 Anderson Cooper? Pain is a fact.
39:23 Speaker 07 Yeah. And I think what we do is how to live with that pain a little bit more wisely or better or cheerfully. My husband and I, we are in pain. We have the pain, but that doesn't stop us from laughing. I think that pain or that abyss is you coexist rather than getting rid of.
39:47 Anderson Cooper? That podcast will be released in two weeks, Thursday, January 22. We're changing the schedule for podcast releases and All There Is Live because we want to continue doing this work all year long. And in order to do that, from now on, we'll be releasing a podcast every two weeks on Thursday evenings. And on the other two Thursdays of the month, we'll have our live grief show, All There Is Live, which you can only see on cnn.com/allthereis. So next Thursday, January 15th, you can join us for an all new edition of All There Is Live, which you can watch at 9:15 PM online. And the following Thursday will be the podcast with author Yi-Yiun Lee. Thanks for listening. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone.
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40:46 Speaker 09 Have I Got News For Your Ears, the podcast. I am your host, Michael Ian Black. We are talking about, will Bill Maher be invited back to the White House? Survey says no. Obama and Trump hit the campaign trail. Trump's latest giveaway, the latest in the midterm lawsuits, and Israeli elections. Will it be bye-bye, Bibi? Have I Got News For Your Ears. Check us out on Apple, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcasts. Even better, you can watch the podcast on Spotify.
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