0:00

The holidays start here at Kroger with

0:02

a variety of options to celebrate traditions

0:04

old and new. You could do a

0:07

classic herb roasted turkey or spice it

0:09

up and make turkey tacos. Serve up

0:11

a go-to shrimp cocktail or use Simple

0:14

Truth wild caught shrimp for your first

0:16

Cajun risotto. Make creamy mac and cheese

0:18

or a spinach artichoke fondue from our

0:21

selection of Murray's cheese. No matter how

0:23

you shop, Kroger has all the freshest

0:25

ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions.

0:28

Kroger, fresh for everyone. Grief,

0:34

when it comes, is nothing we expect it to

0:36

be. Joan Didion wrote

0:38

that in her book, The Year of Magical

0:40

Thinking. Boy, was she right. It's

0:43

nothing we expect it to be and it's

0:45

different for everybody. So wherever

0:47

you are in your grief, I hope you

0:49

find something in this podcast today that's helpful.

0:55

In a few minutes, I'll sit down with President

0:57

Joe Biden in the White House for a conversation

0:59

about the losses in his life and how he

1:01

lives with them. It is,

1:03

I think, the first time any sitting

1:06

US president has agreed to do an

1:08

entire interview solely focused on grief. A

1:14

couple days before the interview, I was going through a

1:16

box of stuff in my basement that belonged to my

1:18

brother Carter. He died by suicide in 1988.

1:22

I don't have a lot of photos of Carter visible

1:24

in my house. I still find it too painful. In

1:28

the box, there were a bunch of pictures of him,

1:30

but two in particular stood out. A

1:32

Polaroid I'd seen before and a framed black

1:34

and white photo, which was one of my

1:36

mom's favorites. It was taken

1:38

by a friend of his, Winky Lewis, shortly

1:40

before he graduated Princeton. He's

1:43

smiling and he looks so young

1:45

and so handsome and so

1:47

happy. Fifteen months later,

1:49

he killed himself in front of our mom. He

1:52

was 23. Sitting

1:55

on the basement floor, studying his face in

1:57

these pictures, I found myself

1:59

weeping. He

4:00

isn't the only president, of course, to have

4:02

experienced terrible tragedy, but none have been willing

4:04

to share so much about it publicly, particularly

4:07

when they were in office. More

4:10

than 15 U.S. presidents have lost children.

4:12

John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Thomas

4:14

Jefferson all lost four of their kids.

4:17

Jefferson was said to have carried a lock of

4:19

hair belonging to one of his deceased daughters all

4:22

his life. Abraham Lincoln

4:24

watched two sons die. His

4:26

11-year-old, Willie, died in the White House, likely

4:28

of typhoid. His funeral was held in

4:31

the East Room. John

4:33

F. Kennedy also lost a son while serving

4:35

as president, a newborn named Patrick who only

4:37

lived about 39 hours. Both

4:40

Roosevelt's experienced the deaths of children,

4:43

as did Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and

4:45

George H.W. Bush. His

4:47

three-year-old daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953. President

4:52

Biden's first wife, Nelia, and their 13-month-old daughter,

4:54

Naomi, were killed in a car crash in

4:56

1972. His

4:58

young sons, Beau and Hunter, were badly injured.

5:02

Beau died of cancer in 2015. The

5:06

White House had set up two chairs for the president

5:08

and I to sit in, facing each other at some

5:10

distance in the library of his residence. It

5:13

was a standard set-up for a standard interview

5:15

with the president, but it seemed

5:17

too formal to me, so I asked

5:20

if they'd bring a table we could

5:22

sit around, something we could lean forward

5:24

on, and if the president was so

5:26

inclined, talk more intimately, face-to-face. They

5:29

brought a table in, we arranged the microphones,

5:31

and then the president appeared. We

5:33

shook hands, he sat down, and

5:36

we began to speak. I

5:40

know you're reluctant to talk about

5:42

your grief publicly because people have

5:44

suffered worse, you've said, and you've

5:46

gotten support that other people haven't

5:48

gotten. I know that given

5:50

all that's happening in the world and

5:52

all the suffering that we're seeing, it

5:54

may seem trivial to talk about one

5:56

person's suffering, but I do

5:59

think it helps. helps people to hear

6:01

from others who have survived grief

6:03

and live with grief as you

6:05

have. And I know it's the

6:07

only thing that's really helped me. So

6:10

thank you for doing this. Oh, I'm happy to do

6:12

it. Look, one

6:14

of the first things I learned after I got that

6:16

phone call when I was

6:18

down here. And

6:24

I got a phone call from the fire department

6:26

at home in Delaware. And

6:29

they put a young woman on the phone, one of

6:31

the first responders, and said, you gotta come home, there's

6:33

been an accident. And

6:35

I said, what's the accident? Well,

6:38

your wife and three kids were

6:40

hit by a tractor trailer and

6:42

you should come home. And the poor kid, she

6:44

was a young woman and said, you

6:47

wasted it. Your

6:49

daughter's dead. And your boys are really hurt. Your

6:52

daughter was 13 months old. Yeah, 13 months

6:54

old. My boys were not quite three, not

6:56

quite four. The year

6:59

and a day apart. And I just

7:01

remember, like a lot of people feel,

7:04

I think, remember walking out

7:06

through the Capitol and

7:08

looking up at the heaven and saying, God, why'd

7:10

you, you know, I was angry. Like

7:13

I was talking to God. I know it sounds

7:15

strange, but it was, I was really angry. You

7:18

were just 30, you'd just been elected to the

7:20

Senate. You'd

7:22

fallen in love with this woman on a

7:24

beach and the Bahamas, Nealea was her name.

7:26

And Naomi was your daughter. Yeah. Did

7:29

you know how to grieve at that time?

7:31

Well, I won

7:33

the gene pool. I was raised by a mom and

7:35

a dad who were, who

7:38

my mom was a person of faith. My

7:40

dad was a guy who had been through

7:42

some tough times and just got up. The

7:44

saying in the family was just get up,

7:47

just get up. And when

7:49

you get knocked down, just get up. And I

7:52

had the great advantage because when

7:54

it happened to me, I had a whole family. My

7:58

deceased wife and I had purchased a home. It

8:01

had a barn. My brother moved in

8:03

and turned the barn into a little

8:05

apartment. My sister and her husband left

8:08

third place and moved in with me to

8:11

help me raise the kids. And

8:14

we have an expression in our family. If

8:16

you have to ask, it's too late. I

8:18

mean, for real. And

8:20

they were there. And my mom lived and

8:22

my dad lived. But...

8:25

You wrote about that time. You said you

8:27

felt trapped in a constant twilight of vertigo.

8:29

Like in the dream where you're suddenly falling,

8:31

only I was constantly falling. And

8:33

you went on to say, I began to understand

8:35

how despair led people to just cash

8:37

it in. How suicide wasn't just an

8:39

option, but a rational option. Did

8:42

you actually feel that? Did you actually think

8:45

about that? Well, I thought about... I can

8:47

understand how people could do it. I didn't

8:49

contemplate it per se, because I

8:51

had two boys that needed me. You

8:54

wrote that... You looked at them when they were sleeping

8:56

and you said, who would explain to my sons my

8:58

being gone? That's true. You could

9:01

look. You could see how people, when

9:03

they've been to the top of the mountain, had everything...

9:07

Their life was like wonderful. And everything

9:09

gets crushed. How they could say,

9:11

I'm never going to be there again. So I don't want to

9:13

do this anymore. But you

9:15

know, one thing I did do, I'm the

9:18

only Irishman I've ever met that never had a drink. And

9:21

I had actually been downstairs in the house.

9:23

We were still living in it. And the

9:25

boys and I. I

9:28

take out a bottle of liquor and put it on a

9:30

table. So I'm going to drink, I'm going

9:32

to get drunk. I never took

9:34

a drop, but I stared at it. And you

9:37

know, just how do you

9:39

escape? There was

9:41

a Senator McClellan, was his name, who

9:43

had lost a number of his own

9:45

kids. And he advised you to bury

9:47

yourself in work. He said

9:49

to you, work, work, work, work. I

9:53

buried myself in work much

9:55

of my life for this reason. But did

9:58

you do that or did you not? I

10:00

did that in the sense that I

10:03

didn't want to stay in the Senate. I was going to leave

10:05

and I had my brother talking

10:07

to the governor about a replacement for

10:09

me. You were criticized at

10:12

the time for not spending more time in

10:14

Washington for going home every night to be

10:16

with your boys. But I did. Every single

10:18

night I'd kind of go home because I

10:20

wanted to kiss him goodnight. And every night,

10:22

no matter what time I got home, sometimes

10:24

it was late, they'd be in bed. I'd

10:26

climb in bed with each of them individually. That

10:29

was 51 years ago and my

10:31

dad died when I was 10 years old and my brother

10:33

when I was And

10:36

I still have a

10:38

hard time talking about it. And

10:41

I wondered, 51 years later on, is

10:43

it something that still, do you think about it every

10:45

day still? I

10:49

got really lucky. No

10:52

man deserves one great love, let alone two. My

10:56

youngest brother set

10:59

me up on a blind date five years after I

11:01

lost. And

11:03

Jill had asked

11:06

her five times to marry me, but literally.

11:10

But my boys were

11:12

in good shape. They were coming along. Again,

11:15

I had just an incredible family. I

11:18

told you the expression of the family was just get

11:20

up. Get up, knock down, get up. And

11:23

I've read, I heard one of your

11:25

podcasts about how you started

11:27

unpacking boxes and how difficult it was. Yeah,

11:29

I've been going through my mom's boxes still.

11:32

They're all in my business. Well, I

11:34

get that one because I purchased

11:36

this home that we loved and it was

11:38

a neat house. We loved it. But

11:41

every time I couldn't take any more open in

11:43

the closet and smell the fragrance or

11:46

walking through a room and having a

11:48

memory or packing up

11:50

the clothing. I mean, it was that was a

11:52

really, really hard. And

11:55

so I decided that we're just going to sell

11:57

a house, going to move. And

12:00

we did, but it

12:02

was a really difficult time

12:05

because it was all still so raw. Fast forward

12:07

about 10 years later, I built a home and

12:13

I built it on a pond and across

12:15

the pond was a woods. I remember we

12:18

were, we'd have, if we had a fundraiser

12:20

for my campaigns, we'd do it at my

12:22

home and my dad would come and

12:26

we're standing out in this back porch looking

12:28

over this pond. And I didn't

12:31

think I'd be modeling. I said, you know,

12:33

I wish Nelia could have seen this because

12:35

she lived up in the Finger Lakes and

12:37

like Skane Adler's gloves on the lake. And

12:41

my dad went up to the local home

12:44

work store and came back

12:46

with a framed version of Hagar

12:48

the Horrible. And the

12:50

old comic book. The old comic book. And

12:52

the Viking with his ship and there's

12:55

two frames in it. One where his ship

12:57

gets struck by lightning and he's standing

12:59

looking up at God and saying, why me? And

13:02

the next frame is a voice in heaven says,

13:04

why not? My dad handed it to me

13:08

and said, don't forget it honey. My

13:10

mom always used to, my mom had experienced a

13:12

lot of tragedies in her life and witnessing the

13:14

death of my brother in front of her. Never

13:17

said, she would never ask why

13:19

me. She would always say, why not me? Why should

13:21

I be exempt from the suffering? My mother was ahead

13:23

of me because it was,

13:25

I mean, I was my

13:27

dad though. You know, you can't feel sorry for

13:29

yourself. So many other people go through so much

13:32

more than you've gone through. He never said it

13:34

that way, but it was like, you know, why

13:37

would you be exempt? You and I have

13:39

both spoken to Stephen Colbert about grief. He

13:41

was on the podcast and one of the things

13:43

he said to me, he said, people are afraid

13:45

to talk about grief because they think it's a

13:47

trap of depression. He says, grief

13:49

is a doorway to another you because you're gonna

13:51

be a different person on the other side of

13:53

it. Do you feel like

13:55

you're a better person because of the

13:57

grief you've experienced? Well, that's, it'd be

13:59

perfect. presumption to me to say I'm better or

14:01

worse, but I'm slightly different. I find myself focusing

14:05

on the things. Probably

14:08

the best things ever happened to me was one of the

14:10

worst things. When I was a kid I stuttered badly. To

14:13

talk, to talk, to talk, like, like

14:15

that. And, uh, and

14:17

I was the run of the litter too. I

14:19

was always a little guy. And,

14:22

uh, I used to hate the fact I

14:24

stuttered. It was, it was tightening me up

14:26

so much having to read aloud at school

14:28

or those kinds of things. We're really

14:30

hard. But I realized

14:33

it was a great lesson I learned because

14:36

everybody has something they can't fully control.

14:39

Everybody. And so it turned out to be

14:42

a great gift for me that I stuttered.

14:45

I think the upside of

14:47

going through what I went through is making

14:49

me realize that there's so many people out

14:51

there who've gone

14:54

through so damn much and

14:56

they have none of the kind of help I had.

14:58

I mean, I, I, I was, I, I really

15:01

think, I think there's a lot of

15:03

heroes. Get up every morning, put one foot in front of

15:05

them. I don't know how the hell they do it. Don't

15:08

know how they do it. We're

15:13

gonna take a short break. We'll have more of my

15:15

conversation with President Biden in a moment. All

15:19

There Is With Anderson Cooper is supported

15:22

by Ever North Health Services. Grief

15:24

is a human experience. Shouldn't the care

15:26

we receive feel human too? That's

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why Ever North Behavioral Health ensures

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all members have access to live

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specialized support anytime in person or

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virtually with a 100% follow-up commitment

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the help that they need. So

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no matter what stage of grief your employees

15:44

may be in, there's always a person ready

15:46

to listen. Stressful times can

15:48

lead many to bottle up complex feelings,

15:50

especially at work. 59%

15:53

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16:00

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16:06

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16:09

Each person's grief is as unique as

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16:13

a wide range of personalized behavioral solutions

16:16

to meet the needs of every member

16:18

that they serve. Learn

16:20

more at evernorth.com/grief

16:22

support. Welcome

16:26

back to All There Is. Now, more of

16:28

my conversation with President Joe Biden. You

16:31

talked about the stuttering as a gift. It's interesting

16:33

because Stephen Colbert also, one of the things he

16:35

once said to me, which really struck me, he

16:38

talked about a realization that he had had,

16:41

that he was grateful for his grief. And

16:44

he quoted a line that J.R. Tolkien,

16:46

the writer wrote, saying, what punishments of

16:48

God are not gifts? And

16:50

when I asked Stephen if he really believed that,

16:53

he said that yes. And he explained that he

16:55

had gratitude for the pain of grief. It doesn't

16:58

take the pain away. It

17:00

doesn't make the grief less profound. In some

17:02

ways, it makes it more profound because it

17:04

allows you to look at it. It

17:07

allows you to examine your grief in

17:09

a way that is not like

17:12

holding up red hot ember

17:15

in your hands, but rather seeing

17:18

that pain

17:21

as something that can warm you

17:24

and light your knowledge

17:29

of what other people might be going through.

17:32

Do you feel grateful for your grief? No,

17:35

I don't feel grateful for it, but I

17:37

feel that it's

17:39

given me an insight. Look, I

17:42

was really... An insight into other people. And

17:44

I was raised in a family where you

17:47

were expected to reach

17:49

out to people. It wasn't something you had

17:52

to go through, something horrible. I remember my...

17:55

I joke that I learned my values

17:58

in my grandpa's fitting his kitchen. table

18:00

up in Scranton when he used

18:02

to say, Joe, remember, you're a

18:04

man of your word without your word, you're

18:07

not a man. And he talked about how

18:09

he lost his son Ambrose Finnegan in the

18:11

war. And he talked about all the good

18:13

pieces of him and why he was so

18:15

special and how the family stuck together. And

18:18

you know, and my dad went through some tough

18:20

times and, but my dad just got back up.

18:24

And so... That was the ethos in the

18:26

family. Yeah, no, it really was. I

18:28

mean, it was throughout the family.

18:31

Just this past year, I've kind of had

18:33

what I consider kind of an awakening to

18:35

this grief that I buried very long ago

18:37

when I was very young. When I wasn't

18:39

able to deal with it as a little

18:41

boy, I still feel

18:43

overwhelmed, almost on the verge of

18:45

being overwhelmed by it. And I'm wondering, do you

18:48

ever still feel overwhelmed by grief? I

18:51

do, as it relates to my son Beau. Beau...

18:56

You died in 2015. Yeah, he

18:58

was, he had been in Iraq, unfortunately, for

19:00

a year next to one of those burn

19:03

pits. And he got

19:05

glioblastoma, brain disease. He

19:07

was 46 when he died. Well, when he

19:09

came home, it was clear

19:11

that it was a death sentence. It wasn't a

19:13

question of if, but when he was going to

19:16

die, how long it would take. But I think

19:18

you have to find purpose, purpose

19:21

beyond your pain. And

19:23

for me... You have to find some meaning to get

19:25

you through. Something to keep

19:29

you completely engaged. And

19:32

I had two things. For example, every single

19:34

day I talk to every one of

19:36

my children or grandchildren who are alive.

19:39

I mean, literally, I text them every single

19:41

day I talk to them. The

19:43

thing that saved me and Jill

19:46

with Beau was the fact

19:48

that we have these kids and

19:50

just keep reaching out to keep touching them. I

19:53

know you have two children now, but

19:55

I mean, they were my salvation. They

19:57

were, you know, they... When

20:01

Nelia died, you've said that it was

20:03

Beau and Hunter, little kids at the

20:05

time, that saved you. Absolutely.

20:07

I remember riding, we were in

20:09

the car, Hunter was, I guess,

20:13

five years old, six years old, and we

20:15

were riding along and the top was down.

20:17

In those days, you could put a kid

20:19

in your lap. I remember this. That's crazy.

20:24

And we stopped at the stop sign

20:26

and we were in the country. And

20:29

he looked up, he looked out and all these cows

20:31

around, crazy. He looked and said, Daddy,

20:34

I love you. More than the whole sky,

20:37

the whole sky. And

20:39

I'd get home and they could

20:42

tell too when I was down and

20:44

they'd just be there. In

20:47

your book, your last book, on

20:49

the back page, there was a beautiful photo

20:51

of Beau when he was eight

20:53

or nine and he's turning and he's waving

20:55

to the camera. And you

20:57

said somewhere that that's the

21:00

age you always see him in your mind's eye. And

21:02

I'm wondering, is that still true? Yeah.

21:08

It is. He

21:11

had a smile

21:13

on his face just waving. He's walking into the garden.

21:16

And look, Beau

21:20

and Hunter, they finish each

21:22

other's sentences. They are the closest they could

21:24

possibly be. And

21:27

I think the loss of Beau was

21:29

a profound, profound impact

21:32

on Hunter. What? When

21:35

Jill and I got married, she was

21:37

just totally embraced by them. Everything

21:39

we've done, we've always

21:41

done as a really close

21:43

knit family. We were

21:46

talking about being overwhelmed at times and

21:48

you brought up Beau. And

21:50

I'm wondering, I read a book

21:52

by Evan Osnos who wrote a book about you.

21:55

And he talked to a couple of people who

21:57

knew you. And some of

21:59

them said that... after Bo's death that they saw a

22:01

change in you. And one person said it was

22:03

almost physical. You could see it in how

22:06

he stood. He wasn't the old college football

22:08

player anymore. He emerges the sort of humbled

22:10

purposeful man. And I'm wondering,

22:13

how do you think Bo's death altered

22:16

your sense of yourself? Well,

22:19

I think it

22:24

made me a little more fatalistic. It

22:26

also caused me an enormous

22:30

pain, because he

22:32

should be the one sitting there talking to you. Bo,

22:36

he was a better man than I am. And

22:38

so was Hunter. Both boys were always looking out

22:40

for me, taking care of me. If they thought

22:42

I was getting down, they'd, hey, Dad, come here,

22:44

we're going to do boom, boom, boom. You've

22:47

talked about how Bo made

22:49

you promise you weren't going to

22:51

turn inward, and that you

22:53

weren't going to step back from all the things

22:55

that you devoted your life to. And I'm wondering,

22:57

how do you

23:00

do that when you feel like your heart

23:02

is taken away from you? How do you

23:04

not turn inward? Because

23:07

I turned inward when I was a little kid. And I'm

23:09

not sure I've ever emerged from

23:11

that. Well, I'll

23:13

tell you exactly what happened. Joe

23:16

and I went home on a Friday night to see

23:19

Bo. He didn't have much time left.

23:21

He wasn't in the hospital bed, but

23:23

he was clear with a diagnosis of

23:25

reading. Anyway,

23:28

he said to his wife, would you

23:30

put the kids to bed? I want to talk to Dad.

23:32

He said, Dad, look at

23:34

me, Dad. And

23:37

there's this tradition at O'Hell that came from our family,

23:40

said, if you want someone to look at me, Dad.

23:42

And he pointed and said, look at me, Dad. I

23:44

said, I'm looking at you, honey. He said,

23:46

I want your word as a bite. Promise me. Promise

23:49

me. You'll be OK when I go. I

23:52

said, Bo, I don't want to talk about it. Dad,

23:55

promise me. I know

23:57

you, Dad. You're going to want to quit. You're going

23:59

to want to go in. You're not going

24:01

to want to do it anymore. Dad,

24:03

promise me you will not quit. Give

24:06

me your word, Dad." I said, Bo, I

24:08

said, Dad, give me your word, Dad. And

24:12

I made a promise. He

24:14

knew me better than I

24:16

know me, and he knew my instinct would be

24:18

just turn inward. Do

24:20

you still fill him with you? Oh, I do

24:23

all the time. I ask myself, I promise

24:25

you. I promise you. I

24:28

ask myself all the time, what would Bo

24:30

do? A difficult decision. Do

24:34

you literally feel him? Yes. In

24:37

good days, I feel people have lost with

24:39

me, but there's

24:42

a loneliness to grief, I find. There

24:45

is. But

24:47

look, when I had

24:49

an advantage, I

24:51

still had Ashley, and I still had a hunt. I

24:55

could call some of my daughter and my son and say, Dad,

24:57

how are you doing today? Everything

24:59

okay? Good, doing well? I

25:02

mean, it's constant contact. Do you feel

25:04

alone in your grief still, at all?

25:07

No, because I think that Bo's

25:09

death was even more profound

25:11

for Hunter and for Ashley. They

25:14

were like one

25:17

person. I mean... You're wearing Bo's

25:19

rosary right now. I am, the sort

25:21

of lady of Guadalupe. It's

25:24

interesting, I talked to a palliative

25:26

care doctor named B.J. Miller, and

25:28

he said to me that the

25:30

loneliness so many people feel

25:32

in grief is itself

25:35

a bond, and that maybe

25:37

people can come to see it as

25:40

a communal experience. There's a communal experience

25:42

in that loneliness, ironically. Well, there is,

25:44

at least in my family, and people

25:46

who are really close to Bo. I

25:49

mean, we'll be sitting there

25:51

sometimes, and I haven't talked about anything, and all

25:53

of a sudden, my

25:55

daughter will say, you know, remember when Bo

25:58

did that over at the beach? Remember

26:00

that time Bo did boom boom boom and

26:03

you're able to tell those stories Yeah,

26:05

I think because I've we forced ourselves

26:07

to do it and now it's it's

26:10

kind of like a clue That

26:13

that holds together. I mean

26:15

beautiful. Well, it really I mean those

26:17

two children I'm

26:20

with them. We're with them all the time.

26:22

I mean we they you

26:24

know Natalie's turned out to be such

26:26

an incredible kid She's happy.

26:28

She's doing really well His

26:31

son's a handsome young boy every

26:33

single Thanksgiving Since

26:35

before Bo passed away We

26:37

go to Nantucket because that's her Bo liked to go

26:39

as a family and all of us

26:41

together Because it's just the

26:43

memory of his place. Yeah, I

26:45

spoke to a woman named Rachel Goldberg a

26:48

couple weeks ago in Israel Her son Hirsch

26:50

had part of his left arm blown off

26:52

in a bomb shelter when he was hiding

26:54

from Hamas I mean and he's been taken

26:56

hostage and she was on a call with

26:58

you. She told me about with about ten

27:00

other Americans who She

27:05

said that there was Another

27:07

mother on the zoom call two of her children

27:10

were missing she'd already been informed that one of

27:12

her children was dead and during the call she

27:14

got up and she came back in and Unmuted

27:18

the zoom. She said I'm sorry to break in

27:20

but I've just been told my other

27:22

child has been found dead and she

27:25

was screaming and Rachel

27:28

said that you cried and everybody

27:30

cried and then after some time according to

27:32

Rachel you said I know loss

27:35

I've lost two children I lost my wife and I'm

27:37

telling you that you need to go through this But

27:40

you also need to remember that you will be

27:42

strong again for your family And

27:44

Rachel said to me that it wasn't platitudes that

27:46

it was a real moment of a father who's

27:48

lost two children talking to a mother Who's also

27:51

lost two children? There's not a lot of people

27:53

who are able to step into other

27:56

people's pain the way you are

27:58

willing to Look,

28:00

I mean, you

28:05

know, I just,

28:09

I can remember the worst of all feelings I've ever

28:11

had in my life. Where

28:13

I didn't know whether my two boys were alive

28:15

when I was going home, after I heard that

28:17

accident call. And I'm told that

28:20

my wife was dead on top of my

28:22

one son, my daughter was dead on top

28:24

of my other son. And

28:26

it took several hours of the jaws of life to get

28:28

them out. And what

28:30

I've never been able to do, some

28:33

people can't. I never wanted to

28:35

know the detail. I didn't want to

28:37

know any of the detail. I always saw the Committee on

28:39

Transportation in the United States Senate. And I

28:42

remember this was about trucks and brakes. I

28:44

didn't want, like, I couldn't hold hearings. I didn't want any part

28:46

of that. I couldn't do it.

28:48

And I remember when we,

28:50

I told you we sold the house that we

28:53

had bought it. And

28:56

the house we moved into, I moved

28:58

all those boxes you talk about. While

29:01

I moved on the third floor, a bunch of boxes

29:03

I had never opened. And

29:05

I opened one of them, opened

29:09

one of the boxes that had never been opened.

29:11

I was going to throw out, and not, there

29:13

were about 15 boxes in that third floor attic

29:15

room. And

29:17

there was a scrapbook. And someone thinking

29:20

they were doing me a favor kept a scrapbook of

29:22

the accident and everything. And

29:24

I opened it up, and

29:26

there was a picture of the car. I

29:29

closed it. I took it

29:31

downstairs and I burned it. I could

29:33

not, could not. I

29:36

don't want to know the detail. I

29:38

don't want to know the detail. I'd like

29:40

to pray God that that car hit and

29:42

they were gone. And the

29:44

boys don't remember anything. But,

29:47

you know, well,

29:52

I just think it's really, really, really

29:54

difficult for that woman to

29:56

get that news. The

29:58

hardest part was going to the house. going home because

30:00

I wasn't sure the

30:03

message I got, they're not sure the boys are gonna make it.

30:06

I know they were dead or alive going home.

30:09

Just finally, because I know we're out of

30:11

time, there's a psychotherapist named Francis Weller who's

30:13

on the podcast, and one of the things

30:15

he writes, he said, our refusal to welcome

30:17

the sorrows that come to us, our

30:20

inability to move through these experiences

30:22

with true presence and conscious awareness condemns

30:24

us to a life shadowed by grief. Welcoming

30:27

everything that comes to us is the

30:29

challenge. This is the secret to being

30:31

fully alive. I very much

30:33

wanna get to that place. I'm not sure I can,

30:36

but... Do

30:39

you feel like you're in that place? It's

30:42

one thing to welcome it, nothing

30:44

to deal with it. I

30:47

don't know anybody who welcomes grief. I

30:49

didn't welcome it, but you gotta confront it. Gotta

30:52

deal with it, look at it, understand it, and

30:55

decide I'm moving on. I

30:57

have another purpose in life. My two children

30:59

are alive, my grandchildren, my wife, whatever

31:02

it is, it's not welcoming

31:04

grief, it's facing it. And

31:07

one of the things I tell people, that

31:09

mama will come when

31:11

the memory of the one you lost

31:13

that you're dealing, fighting through, where

31:16

you're gonna open one of those boxes and

31:18

you're gonna smile before you cry, that's

31:20

when you know you're gonna make it. Time

31:22

will come, but you gotta face

31:24

it. But it's hard as hell. And

31:27

like I said, the thing, I mean this from the

31:29

bottom of my heart, my word is a Biden. I

31:33

think it's critical that

31:36

people understand that

31:41

they're always gonna be with you. Your

31:44

mother's in your heart every single day.

31:48

Your brother, as horrible as that was for

31:50

your mother and for you, your

31:52

brother. But in your heart, you're

31:54

there every single day and

31:57

there'll come a time as you face it to this.

32:00

I'm no psychiatrist, they'd be obvious. But

32:03

when you can sort of

32:06

welcome that, that you have

32:08

that, you had that, that it was there,

32:11

I think the hardest thing must be

32:13

to deal with your brother's circumstance. Yeah,

32:15

I get stuck in the

32:18

way his life ended as opposed to how

32:20

he lived his life. Bingo. That's

32:22

what I mean. I

32:25

feel it's

32:27

really hard as hell to figure out. I

32:32

found myself spending a lot of time, what

32:36

could I have done? Was it my fault

32:38

this all happened? What could

32:40

I have done differently? I think about that a lot.

32:42

What could I have done differently? Maybe

32:44

I shouldn't have been, you know, community.

32:47

Maybe I, for example, right after

32:49

this happened, you know, it

32:51

was a Ford station wagon. I thought, well, maybe

32:54

I had the wrong car. If

32:56

they'd been another car, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

32:58

Maybe they, you know, or if... You

33:01

can endlessly go through those. Yeah. And

33:04

eventually what you get to is like,

33:08

I go, I'm going

33:11

to reveal myself here. I shouldn't do this

33:13

probably. The president is reaching

33:15

into his pants pocket and pulls out a

33:18

small silver object. It's another kind of rosary

33:20

and he's holding it in his hand. I

33:23

find solace in my faith and

33:28

all the stories about how the

33:30

Irish are persecuted. You know, we've screened all of

33:32

our stuff and talked about it. And

33:34

this is called a prisoner's rosary. And

33:37

they weren't allowed to have rosaries like

33:40

a lady of Guadalupe in

33:42

Irish prisons during that famine. But

33:45

they had these and I find myself, you

33:48

know, going to bed and

33:50

just saying a decade of just holding on. It's

33:53

almost a rote, but it just,

33:55

I feel connected to

33:57

Beau, to Naomi. It's

34:00

an anelia. But

34:03

again, I... It's beautiful to have

34:05

that faith. Well, again,

34:08

it's almost more

34:10

of a feeling than it is

34:12

an articulatable... able to

34:14

articulate the detail of it. But I

34:17

just think that

34:19

the time's gonna come

34:21

when, God willing,

34:23

I'm gonna see him

34:26

again. And I

34:28

know that sounds probably... I

34:30

think about that all the time too. Because

34:34

look, she's in

34:36

your heart, he's in your heart. I mean, you

34:39

can't look in the mirror and not see her. You

34:41

can't... I'm presumptuous of me to

34:44

say that. Oh no, the amazing thing is my

34:46

kids look like my mom and look like my

34:48

father. It's amazing. Well, by the way, Beau's

34:51

son looks

34:53

like him. Hunter's son

34:56

looks like Beau. Beau

34:58

named his son Hunter and Hunter named his

35:00

son Beau. I mean, it's

35:03

like... I know it sounds stupid

35:05

to people, haven't been through this, but there's this

35:07

thing. And

35:10

I even find that I'll

35:12

find one of my

35:15

grandchildren doing what Beau would have done. I

35:18

mean, literally what Beau would have done.

35:21

You see that the cycles repeat in families. You

35:23

see the... Yes. I

35:26

mean, you see in the eyes of your grandchildren, the

35:28

eyes of your son. I do. Mr.

35:31

President, thank you for your time. Well, thank you.

35:33

And I appreciate you sharing. I

35:35

think you're sharing your situation with so many

35:38

people. It gives them hope because a

35:40

lot of people think I must be the only one that's happened

35:42

to me when they know other people

35:44

are there. The strangest thing

35:46

about grief is this universal human experience and

35:48

yet it feels so lonely and

35:51

it feels so alone. No, and it

35:53

is. And a

35:55

lot of people aren't inclined to

35:58

talk about it either. They don't know

36:00

how to or want to, but anyway,

36:03

I've never known anybody who has

36:05

the benefits from

36:08

all of my talking about it.

36:10

I agree. Thank you, sir.

36:12

This is my mother saying, God love you, dear. That

36:22

was President Joe Biden at the White House on November

36:24

7th. I hope hearing

36:27

the president, one of the most powerful people

36:29

on the planet, talk about his grief will

36:32

help you talk about yours as

36:34

hard as it is. It helps to

36:36

talk next week

36:38

on all there is Katie Talman, a

36:40

podcast listener who left me a voicemail

36:42

about the death of her daughter, Everly.

36:45

It's a conversation about the pain of

36:47

losing a child and the crushing isolation

36:50

she felt in her grief. I

36:53

was at a grocery store and

36:56

I remember feeling like nobody could see me

36:59

and I was just screaming inside

37:02

and really I just wanted to talk about her.

37:05

I wanted to have permission to

37:07

speak about her because I felt

37:10

like I wasn't allowed to. I

37:12

was supposed to sweep that under the rug like

37:14

it never happened and it

37:16

was all of me. That's

37:20

next week on all there is. Thanks

37:22

for listening. All

37:28

There Is is a production of CNN Audio.

37:30

The show is produced by Grace Walker and

37:33

Dan Bloom. Our senior producers are Hailey Thomas

37:35

and Felicia Patinkin. Dan

37:37

D'Zula is our technical director and Steve

37:39

Lichtai is the executive producer of CNN

37:41

Audio. Support from

37:44

Charlie Moore, Kerry Rubin, Shymri Chitri,

37:46

Ronnie Bettis, Alex Maniseri, Robert

37:49

Mathers, John Deonora, Laini

37:51

Steinhardt, Jamis Andres, Nicole

37:53

Pesseroo, and Lisa Namro.

37:56

Special thanks to Katie Hinman. All

38:08

There Is with Anderson Cooper is supported

38:10

by Evernorth Health Services. Grief

38:13

is a human experience. Shouldn't the

38:15

care we receive feel human too? That's

38:17

why Evernorth Behavioral Health ensures all

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help that they need. So

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no matter what stage of grief your

38:33

employees may be in, there's always a

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