(Above: Mary Tyler Moore with her mother and father, Marjorie and George Tyler Moore, at the Broadway premiere of a revival of A Taste of Honey in 1981 at the Century Theatre in New York City. )
I have been writing on social media this week - and on Substack Notes - about my parents who died consecutive deaths when I was 7 and 8. My father was 32 when he died in a car accident in 1963. My mother was 33 when in 1964 she died of esophageal cancer. My mother was born on May 6th. My father was born on May 7th. I have not only thought about loss and grief a lot this week, but also in the dozen years I have been in recovery for meth addiction. I thus have thought a lot about Mama and Daddy. It took me a long time to forgive them for dying. I finally have. Now to forgive myself for its having taken so long to do so - and for becoming HIV positive and a drug addict to get there. To get here. This morning in Paris. A Thursday. This one day.
I woke up and found myself listening to this audio clip of Mary Tyler Moore talking to me about her own addiction to alcohol and her memories of her own parents and how the loss of parents, no matter what our ages are when it happens, proves to be the lessening that becomes the more of us. Fifteen years ago, I spent a long afternoon with her out at her home in Connecticut by the fire for a piece I was writing about her for Parade magazine because she had a book coming out about her life that focused on her living so much of it as a Type 1 diabetic. I disagreed with her politics - she was a staunch Republican and Fox News viewer - but that didn’t lessen my adoration of her because she was more than just that. I would like to think Trump would have been a faulty bridge too far for her.
I was trying to find some audio clips this morning of Elizabeth Taylor talking to me that the BBC had asked me about purchasing for a documentary they are doing about her, but I was instead led to this one. I wrote a column around this time last year about Mary and included a couple of audio clips for all subscribers, free and paid, to hear - but this one was only for paid subscribers initially. So I thought I’d release it from behind its pay wall this morning in memory of my own mama and daddy.
Now I’ll keep looking for the Elizabeth ones.
And forgiving myself.
(Above: Mary with her parents and younger brother, John.)