On Tuesday’s episode of Anderson Cooper’s eponymous talk show, the journalist and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, opened up about the suicide of Anderson’s brother Carter Vanderbilt Cooper in 1988.
“I still run through [the day Carter died],” the heiress, 87, said. “He did not jump. He was sitting on the [balcony] wall with one foot on and one hanging over, and he kept looking down. I kept begging him [to come back].” When Carter, then 23, let go and fell the 13 floors to his death, Vanderbilt had “a moment where I thought I was going to jump after him. But then I thought of [Anderson] and it stopped me from doing that.”
In 1997, Vanderbilt wrote the book A Mother’s Story, in which she describes Carter’s suicide as being a psychotic episode induced by an allergic reaction to a prescription drug. In a 2005 CNN article, Cooper described countless people telling him his brother “was the last person” they thought would ever commit suicide.
“There’s this word closure,” Vanderbilt said. “And there is never closure on something that happens like this.” Cooper, 44, held back tears as he echoed his mother’s sentiments. [Closure] is like a TV word,” he said.
Although Vanderbilt tells Anderson, “You never get over it, but you learn to live with it,” the talk show host and CNN correspondent uses the heartbreaking experience as just one more reason to see his mom as an inspiration.
“You have survived so many things,” Anderson says. “This custody battle when you were 10 years old, the loss of your father when you were an infant, the loss of Carter, of my dad, your husband and so many others.”
“It hasn’t made you tough,” he continues. “It hasn’t hardened you. You’re still open to experience and open to new loss and open to new heartbreak and to new love.”
“I still run through [the day Carter died],” the heiress, 87, said. “He did not jump. He was sitting on the [balcony] wall with one foot on and one hanging over, and he kept looking down. I kept begging him [to come back].” When Carter, then 23, let go and fell the 13 floors to his death, Vanderbilt had “a moment where I thought I was going to jump after him. But then I thought of [Anderson] and it stopped me from doing that.”
In 1997, Vanderbilt wrote the book A Mother’s Story, in which she describes Carter’s suicide as being a psychotic episode induced by an allergic reaction to a prescription drug. In a 2005 CNN article, Cooper described countless people telling him his brother “was the last person” they thought would ever commit suicide.
“There’s this word closure,” Vanderbilt said. “And there is never closure on something that happens like this.” Cooper, 44, held back tears as he echoed his mother’s sentiments. [Closure] is like a TV word,” he said.
Although Vanderbilt tells Anderson, “You never get over it, but you learn to live with it,” the talk show host and CNN correspondent uses the heartbreaking experience as just one more reason to see his mom as an inspiration.
“You have survived so many things,” Anderson says. “This custody battle when you were 10 years old, the loss of your father when you were an infant, the loss of Carter, of my dad, your husband and so many others.”
“It hasn’t made you tough,” he continues. “It hasn’t hardened you. You’re still open to experience and open to new loss and open to new heartbreak and to new love.”
