Anderson Cooper Reveals Tough Conversations With Son

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Anderson Cooper recently opened up about having a tough conversation with one of his young sons.

On Thursday, February 20, the journalist attended On Air Fest in Brooklyn, New York. While speaking at the event, Cooper was asked about grief during a segment called “All There Is.”

In his response, Cooper, who lost his mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, in 2019, noted that one of his sons started asking him questions about death, specifically related to Vanderbilt.

“When my son brought it up the first time, I froze for a second,” Cooper said, according to People magazine. “And then we just had a conversation. I said, ‘Yeah, she died.’ And [he asked] ‘When?’ And I said, ‘Oh, you know, about a year before you were born and these are pictures,” he continued.

Cooper did not disclose which son— Wyatt, 4, or Sebastian, 3 — asked him the questions.

“[My son] was like, ‘Do you miss her?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I miss her a lot.’ And then he’s like, ‘When are you, are you gonna die?’ And I was like, ‘Well, you know, we’re all gonna die at some point.’ And it wasn’t just a one-shot deal. I mean, we’ve had an ongoing conversation about it,” Cooper added.

Grief has long haunted Cooper, who lost his father, Wyatt Cooper, in 1988, and his brother Carter Cooper that same year — the latter of whom died by suicide at the age of 23.

Anderson got emotional when talking more about his dad’s death. According to the Daily Beast, he said that he’d been going through some old photographs that belonged to his dad. One picture was of wisteria plants that his dad put in the yard. He wrote such on the back of the photo.

“I realized last night that [my dad] knew he was going to die at 50 because his dad died at 50 and he was making notes,” Anderson said, getting choked up.

He went on to say that he hopes to document things for his kids so that they have a better grasp on the past, which can help some people deal with grief.

“I’m organizing all these things so that one day, whether it’s, you know, as teenagers and I’m alive and they want to know about the past or I’m dead and it’s 30 years from now, they will be able to look and know like, ‘Oh, this is where I came from. This is part of my past,'” he said.