0:00

Grief is a human experience, and the care we

0:02

receive should be too. EverNorth Behavioral

0:05

Health ensures all members have access to

0:07

live, specialized support in person or virtually,

0:09

with a 100% follow-up

0:11

commitment to make sure they get the help they need.

0:14

There's always a person there. With

0:22

Evernorth's wide range of behavioral

0:25

solutions, care can be personalized,

0:27

simple, and more accessible. Learn

0:29

more at evernorth.com/griefsupport. A

0:31

couple weeks ago, I found three boxes in my

0:34

basement that were filled with the old Christmas ornaments.

0:36

They had been packed away in 1987. That

0:39

was the last year we had Christmas with my brother

0:41

Carter. He died seven months later,

0:44

and my mom and I never celebrated holidays

0:46

again. The dreaded holidays.

0:49

That's what my mom started calling them, which

0:51

always made us giggle. I

0:55

mentioned in the first season of the podcast that

0:57

I didn't realize she and I had the same

0:59

strange laugh until just shortly before she died, and

1:01

I listened to this audio that I'd recorded of

1:03

her. She

1:06

and I would still get together on Christmas and

1:08

Thanksgiving, but we'd usually just go to the movies.

1:11

I'd seen the boxes of ornaments over the years,

1:13

but never opened them until last week. I

1:16

was amazed that most of them were intact,

1:18

and I recognized so many of them from

1:20

my childhood. On the back

1:22

of one, which looked like a gingerbread cookie, my

1:24

mom had written my brother's name and

1:26

noted that the ornament was a gift to him from

1:29

her aunt Telma. Another

1:31

ornament had a photo in it of my dad and mom

1:33

and brother and me in front of a Christmas tree. I

1:36

was maybe three years old. When

1:38

we got our tree last week, I brought the

1:40

boxes up from my basement. My son Wyatt was

1:42

singing. Jingle

1:45

bell, jingle bell, jingle all

1:47

the way. Here's

1:50

the first Christmas Wyatt is really excited

1:52

about. He's nearly four and has fully

1:54

woken up to the fact that Santa

1:56

brings gifts, reindeer land on roofs, and

1:58

jingle bells is a song he can

2:00

sing all day long. He

2:06

made a list of what he's hoping Santa will bring him.

2:11

He wants a toy car, two candy

2:13

canes, a rainbow, a pillow, and knees.

2:15

For the record he has two knees

2:17

that seem to work just fine but

2:19

apparently he wants some backups. It

2:22

was late and we decided to decorate the tree

2:25

the following morning. When I put

2:27

Wyatt to bed he was so excited. We're

2:30

off to sleep we can put the ornaments. We

2:33

can put the what? The ornaments. The

2:36

ornaments? Yeah. Yeah, we'll put the ornaments

2:38

on. The presents are gonna

2:40

come soon. Yeah,

2:43

the poem with Santa comes. Putting

2:47

up the ornaments was lovely. I mean

2:50

I did get a little teary-eyed at times but

2:52

the kids didn't notice and seeing

2:54

their joy it was incredible.

2:57

I wasn't sure I was gonna say anything about this

2:59

in the podcast because I know how difficult this time

3:02

of year can be for so many of you who

3:04

are listening and it's so

3:06

difficult for me but I decided

3:08

to talk about it because I did

3:10

get a glimpse of something that I don't think

3:12

I had before. A hint

3:14

that that feelings can

3:16

change with time. Pain

3:19

of loss, grief, it

3:21

doesn't go away but maybe

3:23

it really can shift and move.

3:27

I think I've felt frozen in it for so

3:29

long it's hard for me to actually believe that

3:31

but I'm starting to and

3:34

I felt it. It's

3:36

taken me more than 30 years but I'm

3:39

actually kind of looking forward to Christmas morning.

3:42

I'm just not sure where I can find Wyatt some

3:44

knees. This

3:47

is All There Is with me Anderson Cooper.

3:54

My guest today is Amanda Petrasich. She's a

3:56

staff writer at the New Yorker magazine

3:58

and writes mostly about music. But

4:00

she came to my house last year to interview

4:03

me about the first season of the podcast and

4:05

we've become friends. She'd

4:07

started listening to the podcast because her husband

4:09

Brett, whom she'd met in college when she

4:11

was 17, died suddenly in August 2022 after

4:13

having a seizure. He

4:16

was 43 years old and had

4:18

an undiagnosed neurological condition. Their

4:20

daughter, Nico, was 13 months old at

4:23

the time. Well

4:26

thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

4:28

Yeah, it's my pleasure. You

4:30

wrote recently that grief is

4:32

an excruciating but

4:34

nonetheless fascinating experience. What's

4:37

fascinating about it to you? Yeah,

4:40

grief, oh, it

4:43

is fascinating to me. I think bewildering

4:45

is also a word that comes to mind.

4:48

I feel like I've learned so much about

4:50

myself, about others, about the world, as awful

4:53

as it is and as much as you

4:55

feel kind of scooped out and annihilated by it.

4:59

You kind of undergo this transformation and in

5:02

that there's so much. It's like suddenly

5:04

there's another room in the house of

5:06

your consciousness. You recently

5:08

passed the one year anniversary Brett's death.

5:10

He died August 6th. Did

5:12

you do anything different on that

5:14

day? You know

5:17

I thought a lot about it leading

5:19

up to it. I thought what do I do with

5:21

this weird day on the calendar? In

5:24

the end I think I just wanted

5:26

to get through it. I just thought I don't want

5:28

anything to do with this stupid awful

5:30

day. I just want to erase it

5:32

from the calendar. So I didn't

5:34

do anything to market. I could see that

5:36

maybe changing as my daughter gets older as I

5:38

get a little more distance from

5:41

that particular moment. But this year, no.

5:45

How does it feel different now than you felt

5:47

a year ago? I

5:50

remember feeling really annoyed when

5:52

people would tell me it takes time. Time

5:55

will heal. You know all these sort of

5:57

cliches just kind of facile and dumb sounding

5:59

phrases. people say to you when you're grieving, I

6:02

was resentful of all of that. But

6:04

at the same time, in my lived experience

6:06

of it, I think something about making

6:08

it through a full calendar year,

6:11

I felt proud of myself. I

6:13

thought, okay, I did this. I am tougher

6:15

than I thought I was. I'm stronger than

6:17

I thought I was. I survived a

6:20

kind of unspeakable, unimaginable trauma and I'm here and

6:22

I'm alive and the lights are on and my

6:24

kid's okay and I still have a job and

6:26

there's food in the fridge. I think something about

6:28

hitting the year market did, it did

6:30

open something up for me. I have

6:32

felt a little bit lighter since then.

6:36

I felt a little bit steadier on

6:39

my feet and I think obviously everyone

6:41

sort of moves through grief at their own

6:43

pace. There's no kind of way

6:45

to do this. I don't know, it's almost

6:47

like an AA when someone hands you

6:49

like a 12 month chip and you just think there

6:52

is something significant to the month stacking

6:54

up and to the fact that you remain. You

6:58

know, it's funny when I interviewed you for the New

7:00

Yorker, you said something that really

7:02

moved me, which is you said that when you were

7:04

a little kid, the intensity of your

7:06

mother's grief sort of

7:08

frightened and disoriented you because you

7:11

needed stability in that moment of tumult

7:13

and I thought about that a lot after we talked

7:16

that day. How do I let my daughter

7:18

see me grieving? How

7:20

do I encourage her to understand that

7:22

grief is normal, that

7:24

grief is love, but also to make sure that

7:26

she knows that I'm gonna be okay and

7:28

she is gonna be okay. I

7:31

think the work of that is exhausting.

7:34

It's really hard and that has been my

7:36

project for much of the last year. There's all

7:38

the sort of practical things of like, God, I

7:40

just wish there was another human being in the

7:42

house. I wish there was another adult in the house.

7:45

We got the first Christmas after Brett died and

7:48

I go and I both got the flu. So it

7:51

was already this just gonna be

7:53

this really terrible, sad holiday and then

7:55

on top of it, we had to isolate. It was just the

7:57

two of us alone in this house. She

8:00

was really sick. I was really sick. You know,

8:02

I had a high fever. She had a high

8:04

fever. She's up all night. I can't sleep because

8:06

I'm taking care of her. I remember it one

8:08

night just sort of having this baby kind of

8:10

tucked in my arms. And I was crawling up

8:12

the stairs in my house because I was so

8:15

exhausted and just thinking, this is physically impossible.

8:17

I can't do it. But

8:19

I did it. You know what I mean? That's the thing.

8:22

It's this sort of this weird survival

8:25

that has been so incredible to me.

8:27

And I think in a funny way, we

8:29

have been a comfort to

8:31

each other. I mean, it's

8:34

so hard to see her make expressions

8:36

that remind me of him or to

8:38

sort of do something that I think, oh

8:40

my God, he would have died laughing to see

8:43

this. You know, and- She looks

8:45

a lot like him. Yeah, she looks

8:47

a lot like him, which is beautiful

8:49

and heartbreaking. Another kind of tricky part

8:51

about losing a partner, but remaining apparent

8:54

is that you really have to work to kind

8:56

of not turn your kid into a surrogate

8:58

spouse. My understanding

9:00

of motherhood is that it's

9:03

my job to love her with every

9:05

cell in my body, but it's not

9:07

necessarily her job to love me that way.

9:09

Although of course I hope she does. Oh

9:12

my God, you've probably had a moment like this, Anderson. Last

9:14

night I was putting her

9:16

down in her crib to go to sleep. And, you

9:18

know, as I do every night, I said, I love you,

9:20

Nico. And I kind of turned around

9:23

and do that little sort of like backwards walk,

9:25

parents do, you know, out of the room where

9:27

you don't want to make a noise. And I

9:29

just heard her, she's just beginning to string phrases

9:31

together. And I heard her say, me love mom.

9:33

Oh my God. You know, it was like my

9:35

soul left my body. I just like disintegrated. But

9:37

it does add another

9:39

dimension to the pain because you're

9:41

grieving for yourself, but you're also grieving for

9:43

your kid. And in my case, I'm grieving

9:45

everything she lost by never really knowing

9:48

her father. And, you know, there's

9:50

also this element of survivor's guilt kind of tangled

9:52

up in this too, which is, you know, well, why

9:54

am I still here? Why do I get to watch

9:56

her grow up? So grieving,

9:58

I think, and raising. a child

10:00

at the same time, especially a really young child.

10:03

Yeah, my God, it's hard. Is it also

10:05

a grief you feel for

10:08

her, for Nico,

10:10

about what

10:12

you know she will not have growing up? Yeah,

10:18

in some ways I think that grief

10:20

is bigger. You know, I got

10:23

Brett for 25 years. You

10:25

know, she got him for 13 months in

10:29

which she was not yet a fully

10:31

formed human who could create memories. And

10:34

yeah, I mean, the unfairness of that.

10:37

It's also true, I think, as an adult when

10:39

something terrible happens to you, part

10:42

of you thinks like, well, I deserve it. You know,

10:44

like somehow, somehow in my life, I was, I

10:46

don't know, somehow I had this coming. Some

10:48

sort of very ugly, nasty part of, you

10:51

know, the self-loathing part of one's brain kind

10:53

of kicks in. But then

10:55

you look at this baby, you know, this

10:57

tiny, beautiful, perfect baby. And you think, oh

10:59

my God, she did not deserve this. And

11:02

sort of how can the cruelness of the

11:04

world be inflicted on

11:06

this tiny, innocent, beautiful being? That

11:09

part is much harder. You know, I

11:11

think, all right, I can take it. But

11:14

for her, yeah, my God. I

11:16

mean, that, I think, in some ways

11:18

has been the hardest piece of all of this. Do

11:20

you also think about down the road, what

11:23

are you gonna say about Brett? Yeah,

11:26

I think about it constantly. I

11:28

think I started thinking about it the

11:31

day that Brett died. I

11:34

have enlisted a lot of help in the project. You

11:36

know, I have talked to Brett's friends, his

11:40

family, and said, like, look, I need you to

11:42

help me do this. I don't want the

11:45

only things that she knows about her father to come

11:47

from me. I wanted to be this sort of rich,

11:49

multifaceted portrait of all the people who

11:51

loved him and all the lives he affected

11:54

and all the people who have these amazing, kind of

11:56

great, funny, weird stories about him. I want her to

11:58

be this kind of rich. one day absorb

12:00

all of that, like a little sponge. And

12:04

in fact, right after he died, I asked people

12:06

to write letters to Nico and

12:08

mail them to my house. And I have a

12:10

huge box of those that one day, I think

12:12

I will have

12:15

a stiff drink and hand to her when she's

12:17

kind of ready for them. Letters

12:19

from his friends written to her telling her about

12:21

her dad. So

12:24

in some ways there's this sort of practical. How many

12:26

letters do you have? Gosh, probably about 100. I

12:29

mean, it was an amazing response.

12:31

People he worked with, friends

12:33

of ours, friends of his. That's

12:35

such a lovely thing to do. Yeah,

12:37

God, I'm sort

12:39

of shocked I had the presence of mind to ask in

12:42

that moment. Cause I think people also, they

12:44

were grieving too and it was sort of

12:46

healing and helpful, I think, to write it

12:48

all out. And I have a weird thing

12:50

to be paranoid about, but I worry about

12:54

all of my photos and videos and things. They

12:56

all sort of exist on some weird cloud that

12:59

I don't totally understand. And I think, oh my

13:01

God, what if they just poof disappeared one day?

13:03

I will always have this box of letters. I

13:05

really appreciate how kind of tactile and

13:08

sort of real they are and the handwriting and

13:10

the envelopes and all of it. Did you open them yourself?

13:12

Did you read them yourself? No, one

13:14

day. I mean, again, I just, I don't

13:17

feel quite ready to look all of

13:19

that squarely in the eye. I'm so glad it's there.

13:21

It's like a little weird security blanket for me. I

13:23

actually keep the box under my bed and

13:26

it's just nice. It makes me happy to

13:28

know that they're there. So I

13:30

think that will be a part of teaching Nico about

13:32

her dad, but yeah, you

13:34

can't avoid it. It's like central in every

13:36

children's book and cartoons. My kid

13:39

has very recently gotten

13:41

into Baby Shark, which is this

13:43

absolutely psychotic song. I've heard, yeah.

13:45

He successfully avoided it thus far.

13:47

Oh my God, go, please. Just

13:50

never, just avoid it as long as you

13:52

can. It's insane. But there's a verse in

13:54

Baby Shark that's daddy shark. And it's

13:57

funny when she sings it. So she calls my dad,

13:59

her grandfather. pop pop. And when we get

14:01

to the daddy shark first, she sings pop pop

14:03

shark. So she sings the

14:05

pop pop verse twice, which is funny. And I think,

14:08

Oh my God, already in her little head, she's somehow figuring

14:10

out like, I don't

14:12

know that, you know, I don't have a, I don't

14:14

have a dad, my dad is not alive. Of

14:16

course she has a dad, but I have

14:18

a grandfather who loves me. And I don't know if

14:21

it was heartbreaking to sort of see her make that

14:23

little substitution on the fly. But I

14:25

try to talk to her about him a lot, which I

14:27

think, I think it's better that it just kind

14:29

of be in the air rather than

14:31

one day having to sit her down

14:34

and make this sort of gruesome, shocking

14:36

revelation, big reveal of, uh, I'd

14:39

rather her just kind of sort of know

14:41

all the time. And maybe it comes a

14:43

little bit more in focus, you know, year after year, she

14:45

gets older and can kind of understand a little bit more.

14:47

Um, yeah, it's

14:51

like on one hand I look forward to telling

14:53

her about her dad. And then on the

14:55

other hand, I think, Oh my God, that's just,

14:57

it's going to be so hard. Her

14:59

grief will be so abstract. I think

15:01

because she was so young when he

15:03

died, it can't possibly be specific. You

15:06

know, she will be mourning the loss

15:08

of an idea, you know, the idea

15:10

of a father, the idea of her father. And

15:13

that's funny, you know, it's a funny thing to think about

15:16

because obviously the way I feel is it's so precise.

15:18

You know, I miss this person and I miss his

15:20

arms and I miss his brain and I, you know,

15:22

I miss the way he laughed. And, and, uh, for

15:25

her, I, I, my, my sense is it will just

15:27

be more diffuse. It will be this sort

15:29

of strange, vague longing. Uh,

15:32

it's that, would you know that Welsh word hyraeus? No.

15:35

Uh, my mom told me about it. Uh,

15:37

and I, I should have the definition.

15:39

I don't have the exact definition in front of me,

15:41

but it's a longing for, for something

15:44

past that may not have even existed,

15:46

but it's a longing for something that,

15:50

that may have existed in your life, but you, you

15:52

don't actually remember it. For my mom, it was sort

15:54

of this, this family that

15:56

never was. And her father died

15:58

when she was 15 months old. and

16:01

she didn't have a stable family. So it was

16:03

sort of this longing for the idea of a

16:05

family, something she had never actually experienced, but kind

16:07

of, but it's a lovely word,

16:09

Hyratith. That's so beautiful and

16:12

so real. We'll

16:15

be right back after a short break. All

16:22

There Is with Anderson Cooper is supported

16:24

by Ever North Health Services. Grief

16:26

is a human experience. Shouldn't

16:28

the care we receive feel human too? That's

16:31

why Ever North Behavioral Health ensures

16:33

all members have access to live,

16:35

specialized support anytime, in person or

16:37

virtually, with a 100% follow-up

16:40

commitment to make sure that they get

16:42

the help that they need. So no

16:44

matter what stage of grief your employees

16:46

may be in, there's always a person

16:49

ready to listen. Stressful times can lead

16:51

many to bottle up complex feelings, especially

16:53

at work. 59%

16:55

of those suffering say nothing. This

16:57

can have unexpected and serious mental

16:59

and physical health implications. And

17:01

with Ever North's data-driven risk monitoring

17:03

tools, they can help spot challenges

17:06

early and step in to guide

17:08

individuals to care before they undergo

17:10

any more suffering. Each person's grief

17:12

is as unique as they are,

17:14

which is why Ever North offers

17:17

a wide range of personalized behavioral

17:19

solutions to meet the needs of

17:21

every member that they serve. Learn

17:23

more at evernorth.com/grief support. Welcome

17:28

back to All There Is. I'm talking

17:30

to Amanda Petrasich, whose husband Brett

17:32

did in August, 2022. I

17:35

wanna circle back to something you said about that

17:38

suddenly there's another room in the house.

17:41

Did grief open you

17:43

up to something new? Absolutely.

17:47

And again, I don't wanna romanticize the experience

17:49

because as you're living through it, it does

17:52

not feel romantic. And in fact, you don't

17:54

feel like, oh, I'm opening up to the

17:56

world. You feel the opposite, right? You feel

17:58

like your world is suddenly. you know,

18:00

shrunk to this sort of horrible

18:03

little dark piece of coal or

18:05

whatever. I believe actually, let me,

18:08

just for our listeners, you described it in one,

18:10

something you wrote, you said that you

18:12

sometimes feel like a zombie that's been stabbed

18:14

in the heart with a sharp stick but

18:16

rather than collapsing or dying, I just keep on

18:18

lurching about, moaning haphazardly, stumbling toward the horizon.

18:21

Yeah, that is sort of

18:23

the feeling, right? It's

18:25

like you kind of can't believe you're still functioning,

18:27

that the pain is so sort

18:29

of all-encompassing. But, that being said,

18:32

with a little bit of time and space and

18:34

sort of air, I think I

18:36

have really come to understand

18:39

the idea that grief makes you

18:41

more human. Parenthood

18:43

does the exact same thing and I

18:46

think for me experiencing both in such

18:48

rapid succession was in some ways a

18:50

kind of exploding of who I was

18:52

before I became this different person. I

18:55

just become a little more awake, I think, to

18:57

not only how sort of fragile and

18:59

scary everything is, although that is a piece of it

19:01

too, but I think also how sort of vast and

19:05

mystifying and possible everything

19:07

is. And

19:09

for me, it also really kind of kicked up

19:11

my empathy, you know, for

19:14

everyone around me. I

19:16

sort of suddenly understood everyone as

19:18

incredibly vulnerable and we're all living

19:20

and dying. It's inevitable. I think it

19:23

made me feel a certain kind

19:25

of warmth or sort of sense

19:27

of fellowship that was not

19:29

totally accessible to me before. I mean, it's

19:31

similar along the lines of what

19:34

Stephen Colbert had talked about in the first season

19:36

of the podcast of if

19:40

you want to be the most human you can be, this is one of those

19:46

experiences that is

19:49

part of that. I just want to play a

19:51

quick clip from that interview with Stephen Colbert. I

19:54

was struck with this realization that

19:56

I had a gratitude

19:58

for... the

20:00

pain of that grief. It doesn't take

20:02

the pain away. It doesn't

20:04

make the grief less profound.

20:06

In some ways it makes it more profound because

20:09

it allows you to look at it. It

20:12

allows you to examine your grief in

20:14

a way that is not like

20:17

holding up red-hot

20:20

ember in your hands. But

20:22

rather seeing that pain

20:27

as something that can warm you and

20:31

light your knowledge

20:35

of what other people might be going through.

20:38

It's tough. It's really tough. And I feel

20:40

like you're catching me in a good day, like

20:43

a good moment. I'm feeling okay right now. I

20:45

mean, that's the other thing that you don't really

20:47

understand about grief until you're moving through it,

20:49

which is it's... It's

20:51

not one thing. It's not a fixed experience. I

20:53

mean, people talk a lot about waves of grief.

20:55

I think that's a very real thing. You're fine,

20:58

you're fine, you're fine. Suddenly you're not fine. And

21:00

that can be a little unpredictable. You can

21:02

kind of talk about grief with a sort

21:04

of peace and gratitude and then you'll see

21:06

something that reminds you of the person you

21:08

lost. And suddenly it's just all it is

21:10

is kind of rage and alienation

21:13

and loneliness and deep, deep

21:15

sorrow. One person called

21:17

in and talked about not so

21:19

much waves, but more like she was on

21:21

a boogie board riding the waves. And

21:24

there was like moments of bliss

21:26

where she's on the top of the wave and then all

21:28

of a sudden the wave just slams

21:30

you down onto the sandy bottom. And

21:33

you get up and you're like, oh my

21:36

gosh, where did that come from? I was

21:38

just fine a moment ago. And

21:41

other times you will ride that

21:43

wave into the shore on the

21:45

foam and it is a magnificent

21:47

moment. Yeah, there are

21:50

those days. Yeah, absolutely. You

21:52

mentioned the letters that other people had written

21:54

that you're storing away for Nico. You

21:57

are a writer obviously. Have you written memory? that

22:00

you want her to... I

22:03

mean, do you worry about forgetting? Because

22:06

I have forgotten so much and it

22:10

makes me... Yeah,

22:16

I wish I had written down a lot more early on.

22:19

Yeah, with Brett, I know... I

22:23

know there are things that I'm losing,

22:25

you know? Memories,

22:27

sounds, feelings, experiences,

22:29

expressions, all of it. I know

22:32

they are being lost every day that passes that

22:34

he's not here. It's been

22:36

really hard for me to kind of do the

22:38

work of preserving them. It

22:41

feels like a loving

22:43

gesture toward my future self to do

22:45

it, to do it anyway, even though

22:47

it's painful, but man,

22:50

it's hard. I mean, this is gonna sound

22:52

sort of dark and strange, but

22:54

it's it's hard for me

22:57

to think about him. You know, it's hard

22:59

for me to stay there, to sort of

23:01

picture him in my mind and hear his

23:03

voice and think about him. It's hard. I

23:05

feel like some switch

23:07

flipped and I had to

23:10

build a wall. You know, I mean, this

23:12

is something probably I should be unpacking with

23:14

my therapist for the next decade. But it...

23:16

No, I understand that totally. I had

23:18

to close it off and maybe part of that was

23:20

the sort of urgency or the immediacy of parenting.

23:22

You know, of thinking, all right, I got to

23:24

be here. I have to be here. You know,

23:27

I have to make breakfast. Like I have to

23:29

change a diaper. I can't. I

23:32

can't fall apart. I had to

23:34

really kind of put it away.

23:36

And I'm certainly not advocating, you

23:38

know, denial as

23:40

a great coping strategy. I try. You know,

23:42

I've been doing that for about 40 years.

23:46

Yeah, right. I don't know. It's

23:48

funny. You know, and I'm a music

23:50

critic. And so right after

23:52

Brett died, I found music really

23:54

impossible. I couldn't listen to anything.

23:57

You know, it brought me back to him

23:59

and our... life together. Well, also music

24:01

was one of the early bonds between you

24:03

when you were in college. Yeah,

24:06

I mean that was really how we

24:08

met and how eventually we fell in

24:10

love was this sort of shared love

24:12

for music. And

24:14

it was a constant in our relationship the entire

24:16

time. We were together,

24:18

it was just, it was such a kind

24:20

of inextricable, massive part of

24:22

our lives. Music kind of hits me

24:25

in my guts, you know, it's in my bones, I

24:27

feel it in my teeth. And

24:29

I think so for me in those days and weeks

24:31

and months after Brett died, it brought

24:33

the grief into those places. And

24:35

I wasn't ready, you know, I was too deep

24:37

in denial. So I couldn't, I just, I couldn't

24:39

listen to anything. I just found it horrifying

24:43

for a really long time. It was too hard.

24:49

When Amanda was ready to play music again, there

24:51

were only certain songs she found she could stand

24:53

to listen to. You

24:55

listened to Paul Simon, in particular Paul

24:57

Simon's Graceland. Yeah, you

25:00

know, when Brett died, Nico hadn't started talking

25:02

yet. Back then I found that music was

25:04

a really effective way of communicating with

25:06

her. And she loves Graceland, the

25:08

title song from the record. Let me play a little

25:11

bit of it. She

25:13

said, losing love is

25:15

like the window in your heart. Everybody

25:20

sees your blown apart.

25:26

Everybody sees the wind

25:28

blow. Her

25:32

blow is very cold. It's really lovely. Well, that

25:34

lyric, losing love is like a

25:36

window in your heart. Everybody sees your blown

25:38

apart. Everybody sees the wind blow. That

25:42

to me, I think in the

25:44

immediate aftermath of Brett's death was the

25:46

first time I heard someone

25:49

define what my grief felt like. It's

25:52

a song about a breakup. But

25:54

of course, when you lose your partner, there's some

25:56

overlap there on top of everything else you're

25:58

feeling. There's that very particular. very excruciating

26:01

heartbreak of a relationship ending.

26:04

I don't know, something about that song and that record, I

26:06

just thought, okay, maybe I can do this.

26:09

Maybe I can sort of inch back toward

26:12

letting music into my life again. Do you

26:15

feel like that? Do you feel like everybody

26:18

knows you've been blown apart? Yes.

26:23

Do you feel when you walk down the street, people know? Yeah,

26:26

I think everybody must know. Everybody must know

26:28

this thing happened to me. And I recognize

26:31

that sort of neurotic like

26:33

spotlight syndrome thing. And in fact, everyone else

26:35

on earth is not thinking about me or

26:37

my experience. They're thinking about their own stuff.

26:40

But I think I did feel an enormous sort

26:42

of self-consciousness about it at first.

26:44

It's interesting, because I have

26:46

had my whole life the opposite, which is I

26:50

long for somebody to just see it in

26:52

me so that I wouldn't have to say

26:54

anything but other people would know

26:56

that I was scarred. Yeah,

27:00

yeah, I thought a lot about the

27:03

almost creepy old tradition of widows

27:05

wearing black for the year

27:07

of five. And there were times when I thought,

27:10

yeah, of course. I

27:13

joined a support group for people who have

27:16

been through sudden loss. And I remember

27:18

somebody in that group joking. They wished

27:20

somebody made t-shirts that just said, I'm

27:22

grieving, you know, that there was some way to

27:25

sort of project to the outside world that you

27:27

were not whole. Was

27:29

that helpful, the group? It

27:32

was helpful. I think a big

27:34

part of grief is that feeling of

27:36

kind of alienation and lonesomeness. And you

27:38

think, oh, everyone I know is going

27:41

on with their beautiful kind of untouched

27:43

lives. And somehow I am not. And

27:45

it did really help

27:47

me. I found a

27:49

lot of solidarity and just, when

27:53

you're grieving, you kind of run into people a

27:55

lot and they'll be like, oh, how are you?

27:57

And you think you have to say, I'm fine.

27:59

I guess, I don't know, you know, you don't really know how

28:01

to answer that question, I think, for a long time. And

28:03

one of the things I loved about this group was that

28:06

nobody opened conversations by being like, hey, how

28:08

are you? It was like, we all just

28:11

sort of knew, like, not great, you know,

28:13

not great right now. It was just kind

28:15

of implied. And it was such a relief,

28:17

I think, to not have to pretend to be

28:19

fine. You did an interview with

28:21

Nick Cave. His 15-year-old son, Arthur, died

28:24

in 2015. It was an accident, fell

28:26

off a cliff. His other son, or his

28:28

oldest son, Jethro, died in 2022. He

28:31

was 31 years old. His music was

28:33

also one of the few kind of artists

28:36

you could actually listen to that you could

28:39

tolerate listening to shortly after Brett died. Yeah,

28:42

there is this thing that happens for grieving

28:44

people, where I think you sort of seek

28:46

out other people in grief. Nick

28:49

Cave's music is sort

28:51

of infused with this kind of ghostly,

28:54

kind of otherworldly sense of

28:57

loss, yes, but also of

28:59

possibility. And he was

29:01

someone, too, who, like you, was really

29:03

open about his grieving in a kind of public

29:06

way. And I found that so moving

29:08

and so generous. His record,

29:11

Ghostine, is one of the strangest

29:13

albums I've ever heard. But grief is

29:16

strange. Let's listen to Bright Horse. My

29:19

baby's doing great now

29:22

on the next train.

29:26

I can hear the whistle blowing. I

29:30

can hear the moody roar. I

29:34

can hear the horses prancing

29:36

in the postures of the

29:38

land. Oh,

29:40

the train is... I hadn't heard this

29:42

song before I listened to the whole thing. I mean, it's

29:45

beautiful. I love his voice. Yeah,

29:47

absolutely. And you know, it's

29:49

funny. You run into

29:51

people at the funeral or people come over

29:54

to your house and they say, I can't imagine

29:56

what you're going through. You know, and there's all

29:58

this sort of compassion. their voice, but

30:00

it would make me so mad every time someone would

30:02

say that. I would think, okay, well,

30:04

let me help you. It's like, I would just be like, okay,

30:07

Todd, like imagine if your wife, you

30:10

know, uh, drop dead, like

30:13

I just would drive me nuts. And I

30:15

think I was seeking out in those moments,

30:18

again, this point of communion. I just

30:20

wanted to sort of be around music

30:23

and art and people who sort of understood who weren't

30:25

going to say to me, I can't imagine what you're going

30:27

through. People who in fact could imagine it and

30:30

had been through it. And through that, I would

30:32

find a sense of community and

30:34

a sense of belonging that would

30:36

help combat some of the lonesomeness

30:38

of grieving. I wrote a

30:41

piece you did in the wake of Shaniro Conner's death.

30:43

That was really lovely. And, um,

30:46

but you say, I want to read something you

30:48

said in the piece. You said it feels dangerous

30:50

to say that it is possible to die of

30:52

a broken heart, but anyone who has gone through

30:54

it knows how grief can feel insurmountable. Sometimes it

30:57

is a violent rupture. You prepare the

30:59

tourniquets, you apply pressure, you pray that

31:01

you will stop bleeding before it's too

31:03

late. That's

31:05

how it felt to you. Yes, it did.

31:07

It felt like getting shot. You

31:10

know, or what I would imagine getting shot feels

31:12

like. It feels like someone has

31:14

just swung a baseball bat and hit you square

31:16

in the back of the head. But

31:20

in writing about Shaniro Conner, you, you, you wrote

31:22

about a couple of different songs she sang and

31:24

one was a duet she did with Chris Christofferson.

31:27

And, um, I looked, I Googled

31:30

it. It's beautiful. And I

31:32

just want to play, uh, some of it is

31:34

called help me make it through. Help

31:57

me make it through. She

32:01

was just a force,

32:03

you know, one of those people who

32:05

just felt fearless. And I admired

32:08

that so much about her life and her

32:10

work. And then

32:12

to see at the end, she had lost a

32:14

son. And

32:16

to see the way in which she

32:18

was undone by that, I think it

32:20

was tragic and

32:22

heartbreaking. Also, it's a tiny

32:24

bit validating for me almost.

32:26

You know, this woman that I thought, like nothing frightens

32:29

her, she is bold and she

32:31

is brave and she's courageous.

32:35

To sort of see how grief in the end

32:37

really destroyed her, I just found

32:39

so moving. I

32:42

found it so powerful and heartbreaking,

32:44

certainly. And I think, yeah,

32:47

I just wanted to pay tribute to that

32:49

in some small way. Is

32:52

there something you have learned in

32:55

your grief that would

32:57

help others? I think about that

32:59

a lot, like, you know,

33:01

a version of myself that existed a year

33:04

ago while after Brett died. Like,

33:06

what could I tell her to make

33:10

this easier? I

33:13

was frustrated by the literature of grief. I

33:15

think I was frustrated by the culture of

33:18

grief for sort of lack of a better

33:20

phrase to describe the way we, as

33:22

Americans, kind of manage grieving. None

33:25

of it felt resonant to me. All

33:27

of it felt alienating. We

33:31

don't necessarily have a lot of

33:33

practice, you know, in enduring tough

33:36

feelings. I think the

33:38

impulse, at least for me, you know, as a kid

33:40

growing up in America, was just sort of how do I fix

33:42

it? How do I manage it? How do I

33:44

kind of get it away? None of

33:46

that works with grief. You can't fix it. You can't

33:48

manage it. You can't manage it away. In

33:51

the end, I don't know. I mean, it's funny to

33:53

talk about this as if I am somehow on the

33:55

other side of it, which of course I very much

33:57

am not. I'm still living and breathing this every day.

34:00

I think for me in the early

34:02

days is I just I could not imagine a moment

34:04

in which it was not The

34:06

only thing I thought about And

34:09

then over time other thoughts kind

34:11

of crept in, you know, I still think about

34:13

bread every day. I still think about Loss

34:17

every day. I still think about grief,

34:19

but I do think about other things

34:21

too now And

34:23

I guess just trusting that that will will happen

34:27

You know, I wouldn't have taken that advice a year

34:30

ago I would have been like who is this lady

34:32

what is she talking about? She doesn't understand and

34:34

that too is fair you know, but I think it

34:36

is You just really

34:38

have to to trust that

34:41

your heart will Will

34:44

find a way, you know, we are tougher than

34:46

we think we are Amanda

34:49

thank you so much Anderson. Thank

34:51

you so much. This was such a pleasure Amanda

34:57

Petrasich is a staff writer at the New

34:59

Yorker She's also the author of three books

35:01

the most recent one entitled do not sell

35:03

at any price She's

35:05

on Instagram at Amanda Petrasich And

35:09

that's all there is for this episode Next

35:14

week will be re-releasing my interview with Stephen Colbert

35:16

that was part of the first season of the

35:18

podcast I'll resume new episodes

35:20

of season 2 January 10th. Thanks

35:23

for listening All

35:28

there is is a production of CNN audio the

35:30

show is produced by Grace Walker and Dan Bloom

35:33

Our senior producers are Haley Thomas and

35:35

Felicia Patinkin Dan D'Zula is

35:37

our technical director and Steve Lichtai is

35:39

the executive producer of CNN audio support

35:43

from Charlie Moore Carrie Rubin shimmery

35:45

chitry Ronnie Bettis Alex Manasary Robert

35:48

Mathers John Deonora Laney

35:51

Steinhardt Jamis Andres Nicole

35:53

Pesseroo and Lisa Namro

35:56

special thanks to Katie Hinman This

36:06

week on the assignment with me,

36:08

Adi Cornish, how more women are

36:10

deciding to give birth at home. As

36:12

soon as I got pregnant, I started talking

36:14

to other black women. Why maternal mortality rates

36:16

for black women remain stubbornly high and the

36:19

movement of people trying to change that. There's

36:21

really a sense that all of us

36:23

are trying to kind of stay

36:25

alive. I'm talking with CNN's

36:28

Abby Phillips. Listen to the

36:30

assignments with me, Adi Cornish, on

36:32

your favorite podcast app.