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In her new memoir, Whoopi Goldberg recounts how she unexpectedly lost her mother in 2010 from a stroke, and then her brother five years later from a brain aneurysm. The losses rocked her and led her to write Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, “so that I could stabilize myself, because I realized that I was feeling a little at wit’s end,” Goldberg, 68, says. “In my mind, it feels like it just happened.... It’s still very fresh. I do miss them.” The EGOT — Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — winning performer and cohost of The View shares with AARP her perspectives on grief, how she honors her loved ones’ memories and what retirement looks like for her.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Did writing this book help you work through your grief?
I think going to work every day [helps]. I think doing all the grownup stuff I’m supposed to be doing [helps]. It doesn’t go away. It just kind of evolves, and sometimes … it’s just some dumb commercial — the Geico commercial came on during the Super Bowl, and they had revisited the Neanderthal [caveman characters]. My mother and I loved these guys. And so during the Super Bowl, all I did was cry ’cause I wanted her to see that the Neanderthals had moved up in the world.... My brother was great because he remembered everything. He could tell you how far it was from the edge of the doorway that we used to go in every day to the top of it. His brain was like that. I find myself wanting to call him because I get a glimmering of something, and I think, Oh, let me call. And then I realize that I can’t do it. That’s part of why I wrote [the book], because I was afraid if I didn’t write it down, I’d forget it all.
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Is there anything specific that you do to honor your mother or brother?
Every day, every day, I talk to them. I do all of our holiday traditions. I start cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving at 9 p.m. at night and I baste it all night so that the whole room smells like turkey. The same with birthdays. I celebrate their birthdays. I put a little cake out and then I eat it. And all the holidays — because to me, I saw in a movie once — somebody said to somebody else: “People are only dead if you forget them.” And so I try not to forget them.
In the book, you give advice for grieving a loved one. What has grief taught you?
Well, here’s the thing. We never didn’t sign off with love. Even when we were pissed at each other … we’d say, “Listen, you know I love you and that nothing will ever change that.” And that is what you have to say to your family so that you don’t regret not saying, “Hey, I love you.” [Say it] as often as you mean it, which is much more often than you think. That’s my advice to people: Don’t ever let people go to sleep without telling them. Don’t let them sign off without telling them, because stuff happens.
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