Writer and poet Elizabeth Alexander talks with Anderson about how she and her two children coped with the sudden death of her husband, Ficre, ten years ago, and the recent death of her father.
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I hope wherever you are, you're doing well.

It's always been that way for me, at least as long as I can remember.

Thanksgiving is on the horizon, and then of course Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate, and New Year's, and then for me, January 5th, the day my dad died.

My mom and dad used to make a big deal about Christmas.

There was always a huge tree, they'd decorate the whole house, they threw a big party Christmas day.

But I don't remember any of that, I was too little, and I've only seen photos of it.

The first Christmas I do remember is when I was 10 years old.

There were Christmas songs playing on a Victorian music box called the polyphon.

It had been given to my mom by Sidney Lumet, her third husband, who was a wonderful director and a great guy.

My mom always played it around the holidays.

That sound is so distinct, it's always been the sound of Christmas in my mind.

I vaguely remember opening presents in my pajamas in the living room that morning, but my dad wasn't there.

And the thing that really stands out in my memory about that Christmas was this feeling, this feeling of terror, like we were perched on a precipice and it was about to give way.

I don't know if anyone spoke about it to me or acknowledged it.

My dad died 11 days later And we plowed ahead.

We went through the motions in the years to come, tried to build new traditions, celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving.

But for me at least, each holiday was a reminder of just how different our family had become.

And then my brother died in 1988 and that was it as far as celebrations were concerned.

He died in July so we had a few months before we had to decide anything and I think it was around October my mom called me up and she said, what do you want to do about the dreaded holidays?

It was such a relief to hear her acknowledge what we were both feeling, and such a relief to not have to pretend anymore.

She and I, no tree, no fuss, no turkey, no pie, no pressure.

We'd come together on those days on Thanksgiving and Christmas, have a meal at home, go see a movie, talk about it afterwards as we walked home.

It wasn't much, but it's what we could do, and that was enough.

So many of you sent DMs on Instagram telling me about the loved ones you miss and what's helped you in your grief.

I'm putting together next week's podcast, and I'd love to include some of what you've discovered in your own experiences.

I'm going to give you a number you can call and leave a voicemail.

And if you can, I'd love you to tell me something that you think would be helpful for others who are listening to hear.

Try to be as succinct as you can, but try to make it about something that's really helped you.

This voicemail I got from a woman named Cheryl.

Recently, you used the word overwhelm, which has so fittingly described my entire walk with grief.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of my husband's passing when I found myself widowed with 4 children.

Then came the phrase holding it all gently.

No expectations, no limitations or judgments.

No time constraints, no preconceived beliefs.

I hadn't heard that phrase and I like it.

So if you'd like to call and leave a message the number is 631-657-8379.

I'll repeat it at the end of the podcast as well but I want to be clear there's no way I'm gonna be able to include everyone's messages in next week's podcast.

So I don't want you to leave a message if it's going to hurt you to not have it included in some way.

I understand how disappointing that can be and it's totally not worth it.

I hesitated to even do this voicemail thing because I don't want to disappoint you.

But I think if there is some wisdom that you have that can help others, then maybe it's worth a try.

This is all there is with me, Anderson Cooper.

She's a writer, a poet, president of the Andrew W.

Before that, she was a distinguished professor at Yale for 15 years and chaired their African American studies department.

She's written 4 books of poetry, 1 of which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Elizabeth's husband, Ficre Gabriel Sousse, was a refugee from Eritrea.

He was a chef and an artist who died in 2012.

They had 2 children who were 11 and 12 at the time.

In 2015, Elizabeth published a memoir, The Light of the World, about their life together, his death, and its aftermath.

Elizabeth's father, Clifford Alexander Jr., died this past July.

Among a lifetime of accomplishments, he was the first black person to be appointed Secretary of the United States Army.

First of all, I'm so sorry for the loss of your husband, Fikre, and also recently for the loss of your dad.

I know you just had the memorial service in late September.

He lived 88 years and a true life of love and service, a full life, a complete life.

A memorial always gathers people across the years and spaces.

The community comes together to send the person off and I really felt we sent him off.

It doesn't mean that I'm not sad, it doesn't mean that I don't miss him, it doesn't mean that grieving is not still ongoing, but we did the right thing, we did it right, and it felt very powerful.

What an incredible life of service your father led.

He had served government service going back decades and been instrumental in the lives of the Obamas and so many people over the course of his entire life.

In the Johnson administration, He was the 1 who brought the civil rights leaders to the White House to be part of conversations about the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.

He was chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

And of course, also just the father who we adored and that my mother's, you know, partner for the vast majority of her life.

They started dating when she was 18 years old.

It wasn't on his deathbed, it was days before, but the last thing he said to you, I just love.

Yeah, he said, live your beautiful life, baby.

And I was going to the beach with some friends.

So I thought he was saying, have a wonderful, and he was saying, have a wonderful time this weekend, but

And you know, the poignancy is that when your dad is no longer on this earth to call you baby, even if you're a grownup baby, that's a moment.

But on the other hand, what philosophically could be more powerful?

And I use those words when I spoke at the memorial and many friends have written since to say that they're sort of taking that as a mantra.

I've been saying it to myself, literally out loud, live your beautiful life, baby.

And you know what I think is powerful about it too is like, look, this is, you know, a black man born in Harlem

He's seen a thing or 2, but you know at the end of the day every day you have this life you're given and you should live it fully, I think is pretty powerful that nothing became cynical or bitter in him.

How is the grief you feel now about your dad, how does that sit with the grief you've experienced over your husband, Fikre?

You know, when we lost Fikre, we had celebrated his 50th birthday a few days before.

We had gathered, my sons and I, 11 and 12 at the time, had gathered loved ones and family together to celebrate him and tell him why we loved him.

He was completely well, we thought, and he died of heart failure on the treadmill, really completely out of a blue sky.

So it almost feels like it's a different genre of loss.

But I think that also I felt gratitude that he was able to be at home at the end of his life and that he was fully with it in his mind.

With Ficre, the rug being pulled out from under and the responsibility of children.

You know, on the 1 hand, it gave me purpose.

I mean, I knew that there couldn't be a morning on this earth when I would wake up and not be responsible for my children first.

And I've loved following your new journey in fatherhood.

I imagine it's also a, in some way, a help in that awfulness of grief.

It is a constant, it's something to hold on to that, that, that tugs you along, whether you want to go or not because that responsibility doesn't stop.

Oh, yes, it gave me an unquestioned purpose.

I don't know if it meant that some things were tamped down.

I mean, I guess what I would say about that is that I was surprised to find myself writing so quickly.

You know, writing the notes that were not intended to be a book but ended up becoming the book, The Light of the World.

I wrote those words so that I could listen to myself and know what I was feeling, and also...

You never forget, but paint him while I still knew what he looked like.

After my brother died, I immediately began writing down my feelings just to...

Because I couldn't really speak them out because I was so just shut down, but I wanted to at least write them down on paper to get them out and also to remember the sound he made when he put his keys in the door and would come in.

When you live with someone, you know the sound of them entering the room.

And I remembered that sound and honestly, I can't remember that sound anymore.

And it's a stupid little thing, but it makes me emotional.

Yeah, I mean, it's so poignant, isn't it?

Because I do think that there are sensations that get lost.

Although also, I don't know if you've found this because you have so, you have literally countless memories with someone who is an intimate.

And so many of them, I mean, maybe, I don't know, maybe 10% of them live on the surface and the rest are within us.

So I find that things sometimes come back sparked by a smell, a sight, visiting a place.

In fact, I just had a very, very special visit with my kids to Paris.

Ficre was a painter and he has his first one-person European show is in Paris.

Yeah, and so we went and that's been a very special thing.

It's remarkable to have the paintings because we get to look at the world through his eyes and to also be close to things that he made with his actual hands, things that hold his DNA.

But I took 1 trip to Paris with Ficre and I remembered, I forgot, you know, and I said, Oh God, we're in the Marais.

The hotel was named, was named, was named.

And I thought, good thing I remember it because no 1 else on planet Earth knows the name of this hotel.

And I found our way to it and just stood with the kids in the courtyard and said, this was the first time we ever left you 2.

And there was only 1 other time that we left you all because we loved being with you and because you held us hostage.

We were very, and it was such a special moment.

So my only point is I have not thought about that since it happened.

So I say that to say that there are other keys in the door moments, perhaps even just sensorily buried that I imagine keep coming for the rest of our lives.

And what a joy to discover them unexpectedly, they pop up.

You wrote about the paintbrushes and you said the idea of throwing away his paintbrushes makes me queasy.

I find a box of the very best paintbrushes which are made of sable.

I have long been obsessed with the story of the frozen woolly mammoth, how scientists used a blow dryer to thaw him and extract DNA from his fur.

Now I read they have found liquid blood inside a 10, 000 year old woolly mammoth.

They will extract the DNA and eventually fertilize and plant an egg inside an elephant.

Ficre's DNA is everywhere in the studio and in the paintbrushes

I found the box of my mom's paintbrushes and it's the possession of hers that are the most important to me, and that I'm so glad that I have.

And the smell of the turpentine and the paint, it brought me to tears, but I love that smell because it's every studio she ever had, going back from the time I was a kid and sitting on the floor of her studio doodling and stuff.

I think a lot of time passed where I didn't go into friends' studios because I remember many years after Ficre passed, going into someone else's studio and kind of feeling like, whomp.

You know, that it didn't smell exactly like his did, but there were enough of the familiars that just made me think sense memory is a powerful thing to have pass.

I was talking to a director in an earlier podcast, And 1 of the things she talks about is how we can still learn new things about a loved 1 even after that they die.

You can come to understand them more deeply.

For instance, by talking to you about your experiences losing your husband at 50 and with 2 kids, I can perhaps understand better my mom's feelings to suddenly find herself without her husband and these 2 kids.

Well, I think that being a mom of sons is a particular thing, and being a single mom of sons is a particular thing.

And certainly for me, 1 of the things I thought about very intently is that I never wanted them to feel like, and now you have to be the man of the house.

I mean, we didn't kind of come out of that patriarchal order anyway.

But I wanted them to feel that, okay, there's this 1 of me, but like, I'm the grown-up, I got this.

You don't have to take on responsibilities prematurely, even though of course, inside of them, they took on so many worries.

And I think that it's lovely to be able from sort of the other shore to say, okay, like You've made it to adulthood and that they can know more about me now, I find myself sharing a lot more about myself in all kinds of ways.

You also write really movingly about holding him there and also in the hospital.

You wrote, when I held him in the basement, he was himself.

When I held him in the hospital as they worked and cut off his clothes, he was himself.

When they cleaned his body and brought his body for us to say goodbye, he had left his body, though it still belonged to us.

Now I know for sure the soul is an evanescent thing, and the body is its temporary container, because I saw it.

I am Episcopalian, But I did not grow up as a regular churchgoer.

And it took me powerfully by surprise to be having this profoundly spiritual experience where All I can tell you is what I wrote, you know, I knew when his soul was there and I knew when his soul was gone And it was palpable.

It's so interesting for both you and I the importance of writing I especially feel it now for my kids that I want them to have a record of every memory that I can remember about them so that if I'm gone, that they will have this and it's a touchstone for them.

My dad wrote a book about growing up in Mississippi, about his family growing up, and about his hopes for us, and my brother and I when we were kids.

It's a Bible in my life that I read every year because it's his voice and it's my dad talking to me.

I don't know how much I remember of my dad and how much of it is just the memories I've read in the book that he wrote.

doesn't even matter to me because they make me feel grounded and they make me feel like I have a relationship with him and had a relationship with him.

You know, it's interesting because I think that what that kind of leads us into is the myth-making that comes, you know, and the way that the scraps that we have grow larger and larger because we can never have enough.

Fikre and I have a lot of nieces and nephews and he was the magical uncle.

And so 1 of my nieces sent me a voice message that he left for her.

And it was just a message like, hi, sweetie, I'm going to make the tum tumo, which is a red lentil air tree and dish.

I'm going to pick you up at such and such, and I'm going to bring you over.

It's a scrap that I think sometimes can feel more important than the memories we actually have within us.

And I think that the very emotional part is that, as I said, it's never enough.

And also the lives we continue to live, we add to memories too.

So what happens when the children have lived longer without their father?

Yeah, I've lived 45 years of my life without my dad I had 10 years with him and I've lived 34 years of my brother I only knew him for 21 years and that is stunning to me and I remember I turned 21 And that was the year that I'd lived then 11 years alive, and I'd only lived 10 with my dad.

And I remember on that birthday, I don't remember graduating college.

But hitting the Milestone of having lived longer without my father than I lived with him that for me was a that was a big deal Your kids have almost reached that point

We'll be right back with Elizabeth Alexander.

This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Kornish.

We're going to share today's assignment with Larry Wilmore.

We'll talk about his prolific career in television, mentoring younger writers, dapping up President Obama, and what he's working on next.

kind of know that I've been a producer for

And in the last few years, I've got many podcast fans.

Listen to the assignment with me, Audie Cornish on Spotify.

You said, I never wanted our home to be 1 where people who died were spoken of euphemistically or in hushed tones.

So with them, your kids, the speaking about their father was also keeping him alive and reminding all of us that when you know someone that deeply and that intimately, you really actually do know what they would think about a lot of things.

It's not the same as presence, but they are in you.

Lift someone's name, keep lifting someone's name, you said.

Yeah, my friend Robert, who I mentioned in the book, he said, not Ficre was my friend, Ficre is my friend.

And I think that that's, again, it doesn't take away, you know, loss and aches and absence, but it's also saying like, it's not like nothing happened all those years.

I found it so hard after my dad died to talk about my dad.

My mom would try to do what you were talking about.

My mom would mention him or tell a story about him.

I mean, I would listen and I would sort of, you know, nod along or something or say, oh yeah, I remember that or something.

It was like such a deep wound that I couldn't, I couldn't bring it up myself.

The thing I just didn't want to have happen is I didn't wanna be part of drawing the shades.

You know, I didn't wanna be part of making the house a dark house.

And that didn't mean forced cheer, but it did mean he comes to us a hundred times a day in ways large and small.

And it would seem strange not to note those things.

So yeah, a woman named Tawny reached out to me and her husband died unexpectedly of a seizure.

She's just not sure how to ensure that her child grows up okay.

How do you keep somebody's memory alive and not have that death become what it was for me, which was the defining event of not only my childhood, but sort of my life.

Well, I think, and this is said with all due respect to everybody and what they're struggling with, I think You have to raise your child the best you can.

You have to pack a lunch and take that kid to school.

You have to help that child be physically healthy and nourished and active.

And I think that we can get so bogged down by I have to do the right thing.

And then, you know, you're dressed in black for the rest of your life.

And so, you know, I think live and let life.

Yeah, because it's okay To sometimes not think about the person you lost my god would they want that?

They would not want that Fikre would not want that

would not want want his kids your kids to be Constantly in mourning and thinking about him.

When Fikre died, there's no guidebook for this.

What do you, after you've said, Daddy's dead, what's the next step?

Well, I think that I didn't have people around me who had been through it, but I had people around me.

And anybody who knows me knows that the concept of the village, the families we build, the communities we make, and the importance of that is of paramount importance to me.

So I just felt like we couldn't do it alone.

So, you know, at the time I was chairing the African-American Studies Department at Yale, that was a beautiful student community And they wanted to be helpful.

And I knew that it was important to let them be helpful because they loved me and I loved them.

So to say, okay, 5.30 every day for X amount of time, 1 of y'all bring some dinner, please include a vegetable.

I don't wanna like, I'm not gonna chit chat you, just like bring it and leave it on the back doorstep.

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Live Your Beautiful Life, Baby