All There Is with Anderson Cooper - Whoopi Goldberg: Why Did Y’all Leave Me?

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Whoopi Goldberg sits down with Anderson for a candid and moving conversation about the life and deaths of her mother Emma Johnson and her brother Clyde. Visit the All There Is online grief community at cnn.com/allthereisonline and watch the video version on YouTube. Help is available if you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters. In the US: Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Globally: The International Association for Suicide Prevention and Befrienders Worldwide have contact information for crisis centers around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to All There Is, Season 3, Episode 2. I've been thinking a lot about what Andrew Garfield said on 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 admission of the pain. It's the crying out. Hey, I need you. Where are you? I miss you so much. And only in that absence, only

in really inhabiting that absence, being that little boy at the bottom of that empty cave in vast darkness and just kind of crying out, that's the only moment 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 forward slash all there is online. 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 forward slash all there is online. My name is Marita. 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. It turns out that we have a genetic malformation called CDH1. We all had mastectomies at fairly young ages. When my mom 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'm 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 three. 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. Marita, thank you so much for your call and keep loving them as hard as you can. We'll be right back with Whoopi Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by RBC Student Banking. Here's an RBC student offer that turns a feel-good moment into a feel-great moment. Students, get $100 when you open a no-monthly-fee RBC Advantage Banking account and we'll give another $100 to a charity of your choice. This great perk and more, only at RBC.

Visit rbc.com slash get 100, give 100. Conditions apply. Ends January 31st, 2025. Complete offer eligibility criteria by March 31st, 2025. Choose one of five eligible charities. Up to $500,000 in total contributions. 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 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 Whoopi when I was in high school. In 1984, my mom saw Whoopi perform on Broadway in a one-woman show. It 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 really liked your mom a lot.

If you grew up here in New York, she was like the coolest. She's the coolest. She did the jeans line. She was just this woman. 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, oh, I get them. I get them. 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. 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. Yeah, 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 muttering. And then 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 is bad. So what do I do? What do I do?

It must have been terrifying. Well, I think some adult thing in my brain said, you have to speak to her and ask what's happening. 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 Miss Viola, and she called the ambulance. They tied my mother to the gurney, waited for the elevator to come, then off they went. And no one said, oh, and this is what's going on. You did not see her from that moment on for two more years? No, no. 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 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. No. 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 they brought me back. I just knew that whatever they said,

if they said the sky was orange and I saw it was blue, I was going to say it was orange. Because she did not want to be sent back there. Never. She never. 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. Wow. 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 a dentist. She ended up with one fang at the bottom. I used to call her Fang. She had this one fang. The mantra that as a little child after this happened that you developed 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 thought, 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 very much relate to that. My dad died when I was 10. And that was the realization that terrible things happen. And no amount of hugging or being told that it's going to be okay. Some things aren't going to be okay. No. And I very much like you retreated into myself. 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. 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 4,000 times, can't deal with it, can't do it.

I'm not able to ask people for help. I think for me it's just easier not to engage. You know, it's just easier. It feels more comfortable. Yeah, yeah. You wrote. It's just easier. It feels more comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. You wrote after your mom died, she 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 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. A couple of days ago?

Uh-huh. I figured it out a couple of days ago. There was nothing left unsaid with us. So 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 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, of nothing left unsaid.

And 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 somebody has died, which I think is so important. But it changes the way grief feels. Yes. And 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 when you have said all the things that you know you want to say to somebody, when they go, you're not going, oh, if I just had that and that discovery made me laugh. And I thought, okay, see, sometimes

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 been 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. You said, a couple days after she died, I realized 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.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The grief you felt after Clyde's death was both for Clyde, but also suddenly that realization of, wow, I'm the only one left. I'm the only one left. Really. I knew eventually that might be the case, but it never, I mean, it never occurred to me.

And then suddenly I was just like, oh, this is, I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like this. I've never felt alone like this. And of course, I have a 50-year-old daughter. And so there's that family. 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? Well, you're the adult also. You're not the child in that family. And I always kind of feel like I'm an extra, you know, like. Well, you're the adult

also. You're not the child in that family. Yeah. 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'm, 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, oh, my God, I'm the only one who remembers. Yeah. I'm the only one. Yeah.

Yeah. Who holds these memories. Who holds these memories. 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? Sure, sure. Let's listen. It Would you be okay if I played it? Sure, sure. Let's listen. It's called... Who Can I Turn To? Tony Bennett. Can I turn to... applause

When nobody needs me My heart wants to know nobody needs me. My heart wants to know and so I must go where destiny leads me. Yeah. This was always my song. But I loved hearing her sing it Yeah. This was always my song. But I loved hearing her sing it because she'd always sing this when I was 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, is sort of feeling like a lighthouse keeper on some isolated island trying to keep this flame alive. Because 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 a whole bunch of stuff on them, you know. You got you. That's what you got. You got you. 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 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 does. After he passed away. 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 your mom's death. No, no. And I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. You know, we had such a good time. And I had a hard time going to basketball games because he's a big old sports cat.

We went to a lot of stuff 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 you.

Nobody wants you to not live your life. I tell myself that all the time. Yeah, you have to because you just stop. I used to do Christmas party for gaggles of kids every year at my house. And I stopped doing it for about three years, three or four 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, oh, I'm really sorry.

And I'd say, OK, thank you. And I'd get mad because I'd want them to stop asking or saying, are you OK? No, I'm not OK. 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 podcast, 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 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, 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 that I, 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 he all leave me here?

Yeah. I asked the, I... 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. That's my belief. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Fuck. I know Yeah. Fuck. I know. It happens. It just happens. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, I find myself asking that question like, why did you leave? Yeah. Why did you leave me? There were three of us. I also realized when I asked that, that it's very much, it's the question like the 10 year old me is asking. Yeah. It's like the angry question of a hard hearted child of like, why did you all leave? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. 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 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, I decided not to.

I'm glad. Yeah, me too, I think. The thing I learned early on in talking to people, which 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's, that really helps me a lot. Yeah. 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.

And that started to happen. You look in the mirror and you see your mom coming out of her shirt. I look just like her. I look just like her. Lucky you. I think so. 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 really was that beacon of light.

And she didn't know she was a beacon of light. But 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. 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 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 see the Beatles. He was a little annoyed, but not too annoyed. There's a beautiful story about your mom always wanted 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 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. She's annoyed because it's too long a drive. It was too long a drive. I just got off the plane. 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 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 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.

It meant magical things could happen in the world. I still believe in things like Darby O'Gill and the little people. You know, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful. I still believe extraordinary things happen. And so because of that, I wanted her to have that experience. 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.

She was cremated, yes. She actually, she kept saying she wanted 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 some place. Just know I'm here. I'm everywhere. So, okay. And she's at Disneyland. And she's at Disneyland, which I love. And Clyde is also at Disneyland, but he's on highways and byways throughout the United States. Really?

Yeah. Because he loved to drive across the United States. He loved it. I mean, it was. And did you do that? Like, as you drove across the States? I have a bus. No one likes when I drive, i'm i'm because you're

dropping ashes out the window i'm dropping ashes out the window 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 Mae McClendon. She was Scottish. I always wanted to travel around the world with her and 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've 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 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 love. Listen, I asked my mother, what do you want?

What would you like? She said, I want 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 would grab the coat, and she'd drag it down the stairs. And that was why she wanted it. Like in Dynasty or something.

Yes, 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 did. 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 say they were so bad

or they did these things to me. It's like, yeah, someone did something to them. But you don't have to continue it. You can break that. You can break it. Whoopi Goldberg, thank you.'t have to continue it. You can break that. You can break 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. Francis was on the podcast last season. And a few months ago,

I was really struggling. And I reached out to Francis and I told him 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 47 years ago. To the boy, to your heart, to your soul,

that 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 it on your desktop, your laptop or iPad or your mobile device. You can find there a video of the Whoopi interview and all future podcast interviews. We're 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 are on the same road as you.

cnn.com 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 DeZula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is our executive producer. Support from Nick Gotzel, Ben Evans, Chuck Haddad, Charlie Moore, Kerry Rubin, Kerry Pritchard, Shimri Chitrit, Ronald Bettis, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John D'Onora, Laini Steinhardt, Jameis Andrest,

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