podcast
All There Is with Anderson Cooper
Grief can feel so lonely but talking about it and listening to others share their experiences helps. In all new episodes of this award-winning podcast, Anderson Cooper continues his deeply personal exploration of grief in all its complexities. In moving and honest discussions, he learns from others who have faced life-altering losses. Join the community to share your story and watch Anderson's weekly streaming show All There Is Live at cnn.com/allthereis
Nick Cave: Grief’s Jagged Edges
All There Is with Anderson Cooper
Dec 3, 2025
Musician Nick Cave has experienced the death of two of his sons. He tells Anderson how, over time, these losses have changed his relationship with the world; expanding his heart and widening his “capacity for love.”
Join the community to share your story and watch Anderson's weekly streaming show All There Is Live at cnn.com/allthereis.
Host: Anderson Cooper
Showrunner: Haley Thomas
Producers: Chuck Hadad, Grace Walker, Emily Williams
Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring
Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski
Technical Director: Dan Dzula
Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher
Episode Transcript
Anderson Cooper
00:00:00
I've been thinking a lot about being with my mom at the end of her life. Maybe it's because Tig Notaro was on the last podcast talking about seeing her friend, poet Andrea Gibson, die. My mom died in June 2019. She hadn't been feeling well, and I took her to the hospital. That's when she was told she had cancer and didn't have much time. She was silent for a while and then said, "well, it's like that old song, show me the way to get out of this world because that's where everything is." Which I thought was a pretty cool response being told you're about to die. Later, she made a joke and we both started giggling. I happened to record it, and it was only when I watched this later that I realized we both had the exact same giggle.
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:00:50
[Laughter] I don't know. Is that all there is? I don't know.
Anderson Cooper
00:00:54
I'd always wondered where my giggle came from. Now I know it was hers all along. I took my mom home and we spent a lot of time together in her final days. We held hands a lot. Any of the old disappointments or resentments were gone. I knew her and she knew me.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:12
Are you scared?
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:01:14
No.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:17
I'm not either.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:21
Her voice was becoming just a whisper.
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:01:25
The greatest gift.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:28
Getting to spend time with you has been the greatest gift.
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:01:32
The kind of time that we have now, I think.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:35
It's really special.
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:01:36
Yeah.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:39
We're a good team.
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:01:41
That's for sure.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:45
I love you.
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:01:46
I love you sweetheart. You know that.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:50
I do.
Gloria Vanderbilt
00:01:51
Always and forever.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:55
I say that to my kids now. I love you always and forever. I spoke to Andrew Gibson's wife, Megan Falley, on All There Is Live recently. One of the things she said really stayed with me, and I want to show you part of that conversation.
Anderson Cooper
00:02:09
I saw something you wrote where you say you you started to use the word 'allegedly' when you talk about Andrea's death, which I kind of love.
Megan Falley
00:02:17
It felt so weird to to talk with such certainty. To say "Andrea died," as if any of us even know what that means. [laughter] We actually don't know what it means. I don't think.
Anderson Cooper
00:02:34
No, you're I mean it's true.
Megan Falley
00:02:36
I I had felt so many sort of signs and communications that it felt it just didn't feel right and it still doesn't to say Andrea died. So I I I love saying that Andrea allegedly died. To my limited understanding of a body and a spirit. Language is very important to me. So if if I feel like something is not quite getting it right, I'm going to make whatever adjustments I need. I invite you to try it, Anderson.
Anderson Cooper
00:03:13
Well, no, I I mean I I'm I'm crying because what you said is so unique and I think true. And yeah, we have no idea what what this means.
Anderson Cooper
00:03:29
I don't know if I'll start using the term 'allegedly,' but I love suddenly hearing something that makes me look at loss and think about it in a new light. We'll be right back with my conversation with singer, songwriter, and author Nick Cave.
Anderson Cooper
00:03:45
'Welcome back. Nick Cave is a legendary Australian singer, songwriter, and author. His fifteen year old son Arthur died ten years ago in a fall off a cliff in Brighton, England. Nick and his wife Susie have one other son, Arthur's twin Earl. Nick's first child, Jethro, died in 2022 at the age of thirty-one. At the request of Jethro's mom, Nick doesn't talk in detail about Jethro. Nick has authored a number of books. His latest is Faith, Hope, and Carnage, a conversational memoir written with Shawn O'Hagan.
Nick Cave
00:04:19
I feel I was an incomplete or unformed human being before my son died. Something happened that completely shattered myself and broke apart my relationship with the world so that putting the pieces back together again, I f I found that I became an entirely different person with a with a different relationship with the world.
Anderson Cooper
00:04:47
More fully human, which is something Stephen Colbert has talked about.
Nick Cave
00:04:50
I would say more fully human. You know, it's a condition of being for me, grief. What I came to understand of being. Well, what I came to understand is that that we are all creatures of loss. We are all suffering in our own ways. You don't need to have, you know, someone close to you die to be suffering from this thing too. I think the world is suffering in a collective way. I mean, you must know that too, just by visiting war s war zones and this sort of thing. But that the world is suffering from loss. It is the thing that holds us together.
Anderson Cooper
00:05:27
There is an ocean of grief out there.
Nick Cave
00:05:29
Yeah. Grief has a sort of specific feel about it, but loss to me is something a little gentler and and and wider. And I think that that's the sort of connective tissue that holds us all together. I can look at you, you can look at me, and we understand that within our lives, whatever they may be, there is this sort of thread of of loss that runs through. It's as I said before, a condition of being. And that's not a bad thing. I don't find grief to be a bad thing. My heart expanded hugely to be able to encompass all manner of things in the world that I didn't even recognize before. One of those things is the the capacity for joy. Joy for me is a different thing than happiness. I think joy springs it's an emotion that sort of springs out of suffering.
Anderson Cooper
00:06:29
Joy does.
Nick Cave
00:06:29
Yeah. Joy is this feeling that you get where there is an understanding of of suffering and it's a sort of leaping forth from that. There's an intensity to that word that has something to do with the awe of things and connectedness.
Anderson Cooper
00:06:46
So joy only exists because of sorrow?
Nick Cave
00:06:48
I would say that joy comes out of the blues, to put it in in musical terms. Whereas happiness is more of a kind of day to day feeling, if you're lucky.
Anderson Cooper
00:07:02
For a lot of people who are listening to this who are in the midst of grief, the idea that you could feel joy again might seem incomprehensible.
Nick Cave
00:07:11
Well not only that, it it could feel like like blasphemous or an absolute...
Anderson Cooper
00:07:16
Yeah.
Nick Cave
00:07:17
Insult to their to their own feelings and I understand that, but I've found it that there are two ways you can go. You can internalize what's happened and wrap yourself around the the absence of something, or you can open up and take in the world and and understand that that your suffering is not unique and that the world is also suffering and that you are part of a greater thing.
Anderson Cooper
00:07:49
Did you feel that right away? Or did it take time before you?
Nick Cave
00:07:55
'No. When Arthur died, I think there was a year at least of absolute devastating, incapacitating sorrow. Terrible feelings of self-blame and guilt, complete emotional chaos and these feelings of like cosmic betrayal. And I remember sitting in the kitchen and I could see my wife - this was some weeks after - walking up the stairs and only being able to get halfway up and then just kind of collapsing down on the stairs. And andI remember sitting in the kitchen and unable to go through the door to get to the stairs to to be of any assistance. Just this incapacity to move beyond our own internal horror. And I remember thinking, I've not only lost my son, I'm losing my wife. And my wife spent a long time just in her room, you know, in the dark, entombed in her room. And at some point, some months later, I think we both made the decision that we cannot continue in this way. And we were able somehow to do that. But these these did ultimately transform into something else.
Anderson Cooper
00:09:26
You'd said, "since Arthur died I've been able to step beyond the full force of the grief and experience a kind of joy that is entirely new to me. This is Arthur's gift to me, one of many."
Nick Cave
00:09:36
Yeah. I think we need to establish something here is that if I could have it back the other way, if I could have Arthur back and Jethro back, of course you know I would. SoI say these things with a thousand caveats that this thing happens and there's no escaping that. But what what springs from it too is something of extraordinary beauty. For the first time I became a part of something, which is the world.
Anderson Cooper
00:10:11
You felt more connected to other people...
Nick Cave
00:10:14
Yeah. Absolutely
Anderson Cooper
00:10:14
. And everything around you than you had before.
Nick Cave
00:10:18
Yeah, absolutely. I I felt that I was part of I became part of the world in a way that I didn't even realize that I wasn't. And my own situation was unique to me, but also ordinary. And that the world itself and everyone in it were living sort of perilous lives, that everything seemed close to catastrophe in the world. And that's true. And this gave me a feeling of a kind of preciousness around humans, that they are things of intense value and extremely precious. And that idea I didn't have a clue about before Arthur died.
Anderson Cooper
00:11:04
I've had the same feeling in the last year or two. I've started to view everyone as somebody who has suffered and it's sort of levels of suffering. It's an interesting way to look at people as all sort of children of suffering.
Nick Cave
00:11:17
'Yeah. That becomes a philosophy of being in a way, to be able to see the world in that way. We're asked really to divide the world up into the 'good-uns' and the 'bad-uns,' but it's way more complex than that.
Anderson Cooper
00:11:33
One of the things that has helped me is the realization that I am just one of of hundreds of millions of people throughout time who has walked this road and who has there has been a me before many times over who did all the things that I did wrong and about grief and and that this is what happens to humans. This is the human experience.
Nick Cave
00:11:58
That's yeah, beautifully put. And yeah, this is what happens to humans. And this feeling towards the world was new to me. When I see a human being walking down the street, this person has all this stuff going on, all this sorrow and happiness going on inside them, and we are all like that.
Anderson Cooper
00:12:20
We'll have more with Nick Cave in a moment. But if you want to listen or watch past episodes of the podcast, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts or at our community page at CNN.com/allthereis. You can also watch our new weekly companion show there, All There Is Live. That's Thursday nights at 9:15 PM Eastern. We'll be right back with more from Nick Cave.
Anderson Cooper
00:12:45
Welcome back. Here's more of my conversation with Nick Cave.
Anderson Cooper
00:12:49
In this remarkable book that you did, in conversation with Sean O'Hagan, you said something that really just stopped me. You said, "perhaps God is the trauma itself. Perhaps grief can be seen as a kind of exalted state where the person who is grieving is the closest they will ever be to the fundamental essence of things." You went on to say, "to me it feels like grief and God are somehow intertwined. It feels that in grief you draw closer to the veil that separates this world from the next." You see God in grief.
Nick Cave
00:13:19
Well, for for what for what it's worth, I see God in everything. In the good and the bad. That it is an animating force within all things. You could say within that trauma that the face of God was revealed to me and that I understood that this world was good. It's good, it's not indifferent. We as human be beings tilt towards what is good, even though a lot of the time there is no evidence of that. I just feel that on a fundamental level. That there is a essence within us that that is good, that we are stack on top of it all sorts of agendas and needs and desires that get in the way of that essential essence. And I think grief breaks that open and and allows us to connect on some fundamental level, some sort of heart level with the goodness of things. And that's what changed for me about the way I saw the world, rather than before I think Arthur died, where I was just kind of consumed with my own world and my career and all all these sorts of things.
Anderson Cooper
00:14:41
There's a lot of people listening who are in the midst of or in the very early moments of their loss and grief. And I know you get this question a lot, does it get better? And if so, how does it get better? For you, how did it get better?
Nick Cave
00:14:57
It becomes different. It's different. Yeah, yes, it is better than it was. I was describing it before. Susie and I, we lead I I would say.... It's difficult to say this stuff because I don't want people to get the wrong idea, but we lead more meaningful lives.
Anderson Cooper
00:15:18
Because you and Susie are open in a way you were not before.
Nick Cave
00:15:22
To each other. We love each other in a different way. We're we're sort of bound together by a deep feeling for each other, but also for a catastrophe that's happened in our lives. This is a it's a mutual language that we have that's new and beautiful, actually.
Anderson Cooper
00:15:39
And real.
Nick Cave
00:15:40
And real, it's real. I's real, exactly. That's right. And the world is real.
Anderson Cooper
00:15:50
In a way that it wasn't before.
Nick Cave
00:15:51
Yeah, I think it I think completely different.
Anderson Cooper
00:15:54
So many couples do not survive the loss of a child, the death of their child.
Nick Cave
00:15:58
The statistics are terrible, you know.
Anderson Cooper
00:16:02
But you were able to.
Nick Cave
00:16:03
We we were able to. Some months after it happened, we just started to come together with things. there was no blame that often I think often happens. Susie didn't blame me. I didn't blame her. It was it was for us just this terrible accident that happened. We just came together around the loss of our son. Arthur had a twin brother. We focused on him too. And we all of us have a very strong relationship. And I think it it it is in some way cemented or or bound together by catastrophe. And that's part of the sort of beauty of our relationship. The depth of our family.
Anderson Cooper
00:16:54
You were able to ultimately talk to each other about this, which is what drives I think so many couples apart. I mean to...
Nick Cave
00:17:01
We talk about it all the time.
Anderson Cooper
00:17:02
Even now.
Nick Cave
00:17:03
Yeah. You know, and I I don't dream much. Susie dreams all the time and Arthur is always entering her dreams.
Anderson Cooper
00:17:12
That must be so nice.
Nick Cave
00:17:13
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I'm I'm hugely jealous of the fact. Envious of that. And these dreams are not complicated. You know, she just sits with Arthur and and the last one I she woke up and said, "I had a dream about Arthur last night. I was just putting his toys away." And then she said "it was kind of sad." They are very simple. She's tying his shoelaces up, or is she making something for him, or these extremely beautiful, simple little metaphors of love for her son. And it's a great gift.
Anderson Cooper
00:17:54
I think I worry that if I move beyond the grief or past the the sense of loss that I will lose touch with the people that I've lost, that I that they are there in the grief.
Nick Cave
00:18:06
You know, I mean the the idea of letting go as you know, we don't do that anyway. No one lets go of this sort of thing. I mean, how do you let it go anyway? It it simply becomes a part of you. We can have a tendency to sort of deify the one that is no longer with us, that absent person becomes everything. It becomes everything. And I'm not so sure that that's a very good idea. It's there's there's a sort of comfort in despair. I can only talk talk about myself. I didn't do what you did. My wife did, but she has she sort of surrounds herself, I think, with kind of sacred objects. You know, photographs and she's kept every little thing of of Arthur's and and and so so these things have have huge importance to her.
Anderson Cooper
00:19:16
Because you're feeling the other person in it.
Nick Cave
00:19:19
Yeah, you're you're connected, yeah. You're connected to the person that you that you that is no longer with us and and I I for me personally, I needed to become part of the world. For me personally, I've developed a relationship with my sons, both of them actually, and I think about them every day. I mean, I don't just think about them idly, I close my eyes and you could say I pray to them, but essentially I think about them and I talk to them.
Anderson Cooper
00:19:53
And do you feel them?
Nick Cave
00:19:55
Sometimes. You know, sometimes it's of huge benefit. They're actually like patron saints, you could say. I mean, I have a whole... I'm old and I have a whole collection of these people, right? My mother, my father. And in in a way they all represent something to me. Arthur, for example, represents kind of joy. Jethro represents like chaos. And sometimes you need some chaos. Sometimes my life becomes really stuck and ritualistic. And I I think of of Jethro and I I call to him f to sort of disrupt things a little bit. Or with Arthur when I'm about to go on stage, for example. And in fact, before I did this, I'm worried about what I'm going to say and whether I'm going to be able to be articulate, because it's serious what we're talking about, and I don't want to to not be articulate about things. I worry about that all the time. But I think of Arthur and I also think, well, so what? The worst has kind of happened. It it really puts things in perspective. Just go and see what happens. And Arthur is that sort of freeing spirit that I have. So these people live on in a different way within me. This collection of people that I have inside me. And so I don't feel that I've let them go. I know the feeling that you're talking about, but I feel the conversation is still continuing with these people. And maybe it's all a kind of madness, and maybe I'm sitting there talking to myself. I don't know. But it feels like that they are having within their passing a massive influence over my life.
Anderson Cooper
00:22:04
You've talked to Arthur before going on stage. What do you talk about?
Nick Cave
00:22:09
I just say, ";ook, I'm tired. I'm not sure quite how I'm gonna do this concert." And I talk about things that are immediate problems with me. "I need your help." And sometimes I get these sort of weird, sort of humorous, I would say, affirmations that come from Arthur, which he always did in real life, in a way. Arthur could never be really particularly serious about anything. He was just a crazy little fifteen year old guy. And funny. And so there's a sort of joyful humor in these sort of let's say or responses that I get, or you we could say imagined responses I get. His voice comes through and it's like, "Hey, you know, you're awesome. Go and do your job or whatever." You know. It's playful. It's playful.
Anderson Cooper
00:23:06
You've talked about in with the album Ghosteen, that Arthur is kind of roaming around in the song.
Nick Cave
00:23:14
I would say that's definitely the case. You know, I I think that there was something going on with the making of Ghostein, is that I felt his presence very closely. The songs were fashioned by him in some way, and that I was finding a way to articulate my need for for him. I think one of the things we all want to say to the people who've passed is that we're sorry. That we're sorry that they're gone. And did we pay them enough attention when they were with us? But I I felt when I was making Ghosteen this opportunity through these songs to articulate the way I felt about my son and to talk to him and to say that I loved him and that and that I'm sorry. Sorry that he's gone, sorry for whatever failings I may have had as a father, and that I love him.
Anderson Cooper
00:24:15
We had Andrew Garfield, the actor on on the podcast as well, whose whose mom died of cancer. I just wanna play something that Andrew said about about Ghosteen.
Andrew Garfield
00:24:26
Nick Cave.
Anderson Cooper
00:24:28
Nick Cave, yeah.
Andrew Garfield
00:24:29
Nick Cave writing Ghosteen, the album Ghosteen. I don't know Ghosteen.
Anderson Cooper
00:24:32
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I would walk around with that album. I would walk around London with that album. I would get lost in London. And Ghosteen is this beautiful hymn...psalm. It was a friend. Nick Cave's work became a mentor and a friend that kept me company, kept its hand on my shoulder, kept me from falling into too deeply into the abyss. Or at least I could meet him down in my own abyss while he was in his.
Anderson Cooper
00:25:02
I love him calling it a a psalm.
Nick Cave
00:25:04
Yeah, I like that too. I like that because Ghosteen is sort of religious in nature in my view. There's a there's a lovely thing that happened with the central section of that song where it says, "and I love you."
Anderson Cooper
00:25:16
Well let me play this part of the song where you say "I love you."
Music
00:25:25
Listen to the radio. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you. And I love you.
Nick Cave
00:26:33
I'm not gonna cry at my own song.
Anderson Cooper
00:26:35
That's right. That repetition of "I love you, beyond." You think it's over and it should be over and yet you continue going and and it's it's extraordinary to me.
Nick Cave
00:26:45
Yes, that particular record has throughout it so things that feel that they've come from some other place. I don't remember doing this stuff. And it that feels like there's someone else to me personally speaking through that song.
Anderson Cooper
00:27:02
The line of you sitting at the kitchen table listening to the radio, that's the memory you have of of your wife before you got the phone call that Arthur...
Nick Cave
00:27:11
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So she's listening to a particular song but that's the sort of I think the the final or the last complete image of my wife before everything. Before we got this phone call. You know, before everything shattered.
Anderson Cooper
00:27:39
I wanna play one more part from Ghosteen. Bright Horses.
Music
00:28:22
All this world is plain to see. It don't mean we can't believe in something in any way. My baby's coming back now on the next train. I can hear the whistle blowing. I can hear the mighty roar. I can hear the horses prancing in the postures of the Lord. Oh, the train is coming, and I'm standing here to see. And it's bringing my baby right back to me. Well, there is something it's hard to explain, but my baby's coming home now on the 5:30 train.
Anderson Cooper
00:29:38
Beautiful.
Nick Cave
00:29:40
Thank you.
Anderson Cooper
00:29:42
We'll have more with Nick Cave in a moment. But if you want to listen or watch past episodes of the podcast, you can do that wherever you get your podcasts or at our community page at CNN.com/allthereis. You can also watch our new weekly companion show there, All There Is Live. That's Thursday nights at 9.15 PM Eastern. We'll be right back with more from Nick Cave.
Anderson Cooper
00:30:07
Welcome back to my conversation with Nick Cave.
Anderson Cooper
00:30:11
'One of the things that I I've had a hard time with in my brother's death, who killed himself in front of my mom is very much getting stuck on how his life ended. My brother lept off a balcony of our apartment building, and I cannot go to that part of New York City to where that building is. If I drive down the FDR Drive, the building, the balcony is very prominently seen, and I literally try to avoid that. And I read you had to for a long time drive by the cliff where Arthur fell. And you don't -- if that's too personal, I don't...
Nick Cave
00:30:52
No, I mean you probably get it the same way, but you know, the the idea of a cliff in itself as a thing is seems... Oh it's hard to say this. Bt look you know, we'll never get over that. And in the end we found it too difficult to live in the place that we lived in, and we shifted and we we went elsewhere in Brighton. Even though Brighton is full of memories in that way. The cliffs are too... It's too brutal, the whole thing. Little Earl, his brother, had to travel, had to go to school and had to get the school bus past that place and back again every day, you know. And how he dealt with that is to me, you know, I'm just awed by that child. How he's dealt with with the whole thing and continues to deal with that. But those sharp edges of grief, the practical horrible realities of it, I think never go away. You may know it with balconies. I sit down and watch a movie with Susie. It starts off with a scene of of some cliffs.
Anderson Cooper
00:32:20
Yeah.
Nick Cave
00:32:20
It happens all the time. It's crazy.
Anderson Cooper
00:32:22
The amount of people who jump off buildings in movies is extraordinary.
Nick Cave
00:32:34
Yeah, I mean these are the kind of... These are the things you don't.. the jagged edges. The jagged edges, I would say. It's funny though when we are watching TV together and and something like that happens, is Susie reaches across and holds my hand or whatever. And jagged edges are also the sort of glue that holds the relationship together in some way. We are kind of wedded together with a certain pain that is very, very strong and very deep and and full of meaning. It means something and even those terrible things are are are part of the sort of beauty of things too.
Anderson Cooper
00:33:22
Is there something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful to to others? One thing I I heard you say, which I found interesting and helpful, you said essentially I think grief needs to be measured by action. You have to construct a series of actions around your day in order to survive. You exercise, you go down to the sea for a swim, you meditate, you make breakfast for your kid, you do all the small things that maintain order.
Nick Cave
00:33:44
Yeah, that's I I would say that's good advice, you know. The very early days, none of what we're talking about is of any help at all. You know, you're just in this thing. It's so cataclysmic the whole thing, so physical. It's so physical. I could feel this sort of roaring feeling running through the body and and this feeling like bursting out the ends of my fingers. You know, it's not something where I can sit and listen to a podcast and and get some help and Susie too. But I I remember the small acts that started to sort of penetrate this feeling. I've meditated for quite a while before this happened with Arthur and the thought of meditating was impossible. How can you meditate with this feeling that's going on in your body? But I did do it and for a for a small second there was this moment that was just like a like a tiny light going on that felt suddenly something had sort of drifted away a little bit. It was this second or two where I felt things were okay. And and I've told this story, but I tell it because I think it's people often want to know how do you respond to a grieving person. What do I do? How should I be? And the first time I went out in Brighton, I you know, I'm well known in Brighton. I went to this vegetarian restaurant to get some takeaway food and bring it back home. And there was a girl that served the food there, and I I stood in a queue and I could feel people's sense of me being in the queue and all of that. And I finally got to her and she just said, "What do you want?" And I know her. And she didn't say anything to me. And I ordered the food and I was thinking in my mind, "doesn't she know?" You know. And when she I gave her the money, when she handed back the change, she squeezed my hand like that and and let it go. And to me this response was so deeply articulate and so meaningful to me.
Anderson Cooper
00:36:09
Did she look you in the eye when she did that?
Nick Cave
00:36:10
Yeah, she just yeah. She just did she just gave my hand a squeeze. I understand. It's beautiful. It was more articulate than anything that I've read and I've read all the books. It was just one human being feeling empathy towards and or compassion towards another human being. Deeply sort of spiritual thing to do that told me that people were good. It was not something that I ever even thought about before, but there was a moral dimension to what we can be as human beings and that this person was good. And that on some level it changed the way I started to see people. And and I still you know, it's weird. I still get that.
Anderson Cooper
00:36:57
You still feel that squeeze.
Nick Cave
00:36:59
Yeah, in in in sort of stressful times I still feel a kind of sort of I know it sounds crazy, but it's quite a squeeze. It was quite a squeeze. Yeah, quite a squeeze.
Anderson Cooper
00:37:13
So in answer to the question, is there something you've learned that would help others? What do you say?
Nick Cave
00:37:18
'After a while, I think you can make certain decisions about things, about how you're going to be in the world. And I think it at the end of it, it was to be defiant. That's how I think me and Susie felt after while to be defiant about what we saw at that time - and I don't see it this way now - at that time was a indifferent world. We were not gonna allow that world to to to break us. You know, there was that feeling. Neither of us feel that way anymore. We've softened to the world, but at the time we weren't going to allow the world to have its way. We started to see that hope as a defiant act. I think we made some conscious decision to I suppose to be happy. You can do that. It's possible to do. Back in the day I used to go to Narcotics Anonymous and stuff. And I used to sit there two days clean, absolutely destroyed. And there would be some guy there who was twenty years sober going on about what a wonderful life he has and all that sort of stuff. And I used to just sit there and go, "for God's sake." You know, and I'm afraid of doing that too, you know. If anyone had have said those sort of things in the first few months after Arthur died, I would have just you know I would have not been impressed by that at all.
Anderson Cooper
00:38:59
Early on, that kind of a message that...
Nick Cave
00:39:01
"Don't worry, it gets better."
Anderson Cooper
00:39:02
You'll view it as a gift ultimately. That's [bleep] you.
Nick Cave
00:39:06
Yeah, well exactly. Deeply so. Yeah, the word gift just has a sort of new age feel about it, or something like that. But you know, I'm just a completely different person than I was before Arthur died. And that's allowed me to feel things that I don't think I really felt in the same way before. My capacity for love is just it's just widened hugely. And I want to stress that way of thinking is something that comes through time. It's not some sort of failure if you're not feeling that way. It's taken a long time. It takes a it takes a long time. Ittakes a long, long time, but beautiful things often do, you could say.
Anderson Cooper
00:39:56
Yeah. Well, Nick Cave, thank you so much.
Nick Cave
00:39:58
Okay, thank you.
Anderson Cooper
00:40:01
Next week on All There Is, I talked to actor, comedian, director Ben Stiller about the loss of his parents and the process of going through all the things they left behind. That's next Tuesday. This Thursday, join me at 9:15 p.m. For the new episode of my weekly companion show called All There Is Live. It'll be live streamed on our grief community page at CNN.com/allthereis. That's every Thursday night at 9:15 PM. Wherever you are in your grief, I'm glad we're together.