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All There Is with Anderson Cooper
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‘Dying is the Opposite of Leaving’: Remembering Andrea Gibson
All There Is with Anderson Cooper
Feb 6, 2026
Is dying really "the opposite of leaving?" Are we "reincarnated in those we love?" Poet Andrea Gibson thought so, and in this moving conversation, Anderson speaks with Andrea's wife Megan Falley, about Andrea's battle with cancer and why she uses the word "alleged" when talking about Andrea's death. For more of “All There Is with Anderson Cooper” visit cnn.com/allthereis.
Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Chuck Hadad, Grace Walker, Emily Williams, Madeleine Thompson Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher
Episode Transcript
Sarina Partridge
00:00:00
Hold on, hold on.
Anderson Cooper
00:00:14
That's Sarina Partridge, a singer and choir director I met in Minneapolis last week, and like so many people I spoke with there, she talked about the grief she's feeling.
Sarina Partridge
00:00:24
Our grief needs our attention. It's a really important part of our human experience. And the more we try to quiet it down and not look at it, I think the more insistent and engrossing it can become. And it can be so scary to really turn to it. But our grief and our love are like the same entity. And if you are not making space for the grief and heartbreak, I think you're also dimming down the love. So it feels really a different kind of urgent to find ways to let our grief move in a held container, so we're not gonna be completely undone by it. But we're also not gonna pretend it's not there because the heartbreak is really important. And my community deserves my love, which kind of means that my community deserves my grief too.
Anderson Cooper
00:01:27
How to let grief move in a held container so as not to be undone by it. Well, that's something I very much still struggle with and maybe you do too. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone. My guest today is writer, poet Megan Falley, who was married to the poet Andrea Gibson. Andrea died last summer after a years long battle with cancer. As you'll hear in the interview, Megan says Andrea allegedly died, and I kind of love her explanation of why she says that. My interview with her is right after a break. Welcome back. My guest today is Megan Falley. She's a writer and poet and the spouse of the late poet Andrea Gibson. Andrea was 49 and died last summer after a long struggle with ovarian cancer. Andrea used the pronouns they and them. And I want to show you a clip from the documentary that was made about Andrea and Megan as they faced Andrea's illness together. It's called "Come See Me in the Good Ligh
"Come See Me in the Good Light" clip
00:02:27
I wrote a new kind of bucket list. It isn't an index of wild adventures. It requires no bungee jumps, wing suits, or hot air balloons. No passport stamps or dolphin swims. As riveting as those things may be, none of them ignite me as much as what most of us were taught to think of as the little things. These are my biggest, tiniest dreams. To sit with the mourning dove who cries for her lost love, to mend a friend's clothes with my grandmother's thimbles. How about my power drill? We might need your power drill. There are four squirrels here, and they fight when I bring out nuts, and so I got these houses. To watch a squirrel rebuild her nest in the only pine that survived the storm. Yes! Yes! To fix the mailbox after the snowplow knocks it down. I came out and the mailbox s completely gone with all our mail in it too. Have you looked for the mailbox? I mean, why? Have you seen it? To fix the mailbox after the windstorm knocks it down. This seems weird that it comes with a kid's thing, like is it for children? No, it's an actual mailbox. But look at this. To fix the mailbox after a bear knocks it down and a hundred times again. Gibby had this esthetically pleasing solution. To say good night to my mother every night of the year. All right, Mom, sweet dreams.
Anderson Cooper
00:04:11
'I spoke to Megan Falley several weeks ago. Thank you so much for joining me I really appreciate it. A lot of times people ask the question how are you doing but I know uh... that- I read what you wrote about that question that you get and I wonder can you just talk a little bit about why that question how you doing doesn't feel right?
Megan Falley
00:04:35
'I ended up writing that that question feels like a thimble at the mouth of the river. That it is just this tiny little container asking to hold something that feels so rushing and just that has so much magnitude and it's just an impossible mechanism to hold it all. It's also really unspecific about like, how am I doing when? Like in the last four months or this week or right now in this moment. And so I think that a better question to ask somebody in grief is maybe sometimes I just like to share an image of something I'm experiencing and let- and maybe that's as a writer, but- and let the person I'm talking to feel the image. And so like right now, before I got on, I was trying to roll up my sleeves and realized that Andrea would always roll up my sleeves for me and how cumbersome it is to, to try to do that by myself.
Anderson Cooper
00:05:44
Have you noticed the difference of doing things by yourself a lot since Andrea's been gone?
Megan Falley
00:05:53
Certainly, I think I've never lived alone before until now and I do this thing sometimes where I just sort of whisper to Andrea, I just say like, put your arms around me. I just said it before before we got on camera together and then I could feel Andrea at my back too. So I'm hesitant to use the words like alone or without them.
Anderson Cooper
00:06:19
Is grief different than you thought it would be?
Megan Falley
00:06:24
'Yes, it is. I think that I thought that I would be able to have as much joy as I've had. In some ways I think Andrea has been maybe my magnificent teacher because these last four years what they've been trying to show the world is how much joy and presence and love they were able to experience with cancer diagnosis. And so I guess if I wasn't able to find joy and laughter now, I would have missed the point of what Andrea- of Andrea's messaging. I also feel like I'm in a very unique position because I'm right now like on a tour promoting the documentary about Andrea and our love story. And for a lot of people, you lose somebody and less and less=U people speak their name and I'm having the inverse of that experience. More and more people are learning of Andrea and that's unique and really special and a privilege.
Anderson Cooper
00:07:45
Andrea wrote a love letter from the afterlife, and I'd like to just play part of it.
Andrea Gibson
00:07:53
My love I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It's okay. I know that to be human is to be farsighted, but feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven and I will answer, how tall are you?
Anderson Cooper
00:08:48
That idea of it to die is to be reincarnated in those we love is so extraordinary to me. I mean, I've never heard it said in that way and that dying is the opposite of leaving. Do you feel that? Do you believe that's true?
Megan Falley
00:09:09
'It's, it is the most- singularly the most comforting thought that I could have. That's the most- I'm just going to make up a word, but like warm blanket-y piece of writing, or-
Anderson Cooper
00:09:25
I love it.
Megan Falley
00:09:29
'-thing that I could feel and I, of course I don't know, but I choose to believe it.
Anderson Cooper
00:09:38
When I heard it, I started crying, because I mean, that idea is so, it is so comforting, and it's not something I've been able to feel most of my life until recently, of feeling like my dad again, which is just one of, I wish there were more people I felt, but it's a start, but I love, I just find that so incredibly comforting. What was it about Andrea? Did you know right away, like, this is my person?
Megan Falley
00:10:08
'We were friends for a really long time, and they felt pretty untouchable to me. We had a 13-year age difference, and I just, I didn't let my brain even go there. And then once it did go there, it never left. Yeah, we fell in love on the dance floor.
Anderson Cooper
00:10:31
I mean, I've done that a couple of times, but he often doesn't last past the dance floor.
Megan Falley
00:10:40
Yeah, it lasted a long time past the dance floor. I think we sort of didn't stop dancing. And then we kept, we really started dancing even more throughout their diagnosis. Like that sounds metaphorical, but literally we were always dancing and kind of like two kids putting on a living room show at all times. We just had fun together.
Anderson Cooper
00:11:03
There's part of the film, which is so beautiful, it's something Andrea said about something that happened after you both took a car ride and a feeling that Andrea had. And let's play that.
"Come See Me in the Good Light" clip
00:11:18
I feel like I lived so much longer in these last years than I did all the years before. Wow. Wow, I got this life. I know I'm not gonna die today, like I feel pretty certain. It's so wow, like wow, I get tomorrow too. So what happens next? I don't know. I want to live in the mystery, you know? I want my very last second to be like... Damn, I wish I had a million more of these.
Anderson Cooper
00:12:19
Is that what you feel that Andrea's last second was like?
Megan Falley
00:12:24
'One of the few, like, lucid things that Andrea said was, I fucking loved my life. They said that to a room, their parents, four ex-girlfriends, Tig. Yeah, so a few people they hadn't made out with. And I think it really stunned everybody in the room. Andrea died over the course of three days and really wanted to live longer. They loved this life. They loved this planet and wanted to be 100 years old for sure. So yeah, I will say they definitely wanted more seconds here.
Anderson Cooper
00:13:04
Tig said it was a gift to be not only there in that time, but to be and hear Andrea say, I fucking love my life.
Megan Falley
00:13:17
Yeah, there's, I think the way that people navigate their own death or illness experience has a profound impact on the people around them witnessing it. And I will say, like, my relationship to death has changed profoundly since watching Andrea die. By, I mean, this is going to sound morbid and I don't mean it this way because I also would really like to live a long time, but I don't feel afraid of it, because I feel that I will meet Andrea there. And I will just preface like I didn't didn't grow up with any kind of religion or anything but Andrea was just such a was so much energy and spirit, and it doesn't feel possible for that to be gone. And so where is that? And I feel like dying will be the the answer to that or the reunion of that and it just it intrigues me a bit more than I would say it ever had. Again not not rushing it in any way.
Anderson Cooper
00:14:39
You're not afraid of it in the way you might have been before.
Megan Falley
00:14:43
Yeah, I mean, Andrea died at home. They died in our bed. They, you know, their heartbeats stopped beneath my hand. Like I, they don't, I don't think there's a way to get, to get closer and that was my experience.
Anderson Cooper
00:14:59
You felt Andrea's heartbeat stop.
Megan Falley
00:15:03
I don't know if I've ever told this story, but the last thing I said to Andrea was, I said, you're a star, you are a comet. And it was seconds after that, that their heart stopped. And my friends who were there told me, I remember that, but they told me that afterward I said to Andrea, you did it. Like, congratulations, like you did it.
Anderson Cooper
00:15:33
We're going to take a short break when we come back more with Megan Falley. Welcome back, we're talking to writer Megan Falley. Living with that diagnosis for four years, did you grieve before Andrea died? Did you feel a form of grief or allow yourself to feel a form of grief while Andrea was alive?
Megan Falley
00:16:02
I think subconsciously that must have always been going on just to welcome mortality into our home and have conversations and there was definitely never a day since their diagnosis that I didn't think about cancer. I believed that if anybody in this planet had a chance of being the miracle or having a radical remission or anything like that, it would have been Andrea because they were so miraculous in so many ways. And I held a lot of hope right through the end. And so did Andrea. I mean, they were in the last week of their life, they were on oxygen, but they were also refusing to eat sugar because they wanted to stay healthy in the very last days. And so I think we're both really made of hope. I'm a very present person, I don't worry. Which is really, really confounds people, but I really don't tend to worry. And so I feel like my grief really came most as it was happening. I wasn't really grieving Andrea before that. I was celebrating Andrea and loving Andrea and living.
Anderson Cooper
00:17:42
I saw something you wrote where you say you started to use the word allegedly when you talk about Andrea's death, which I kind of love. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Megan Falley
00:17:53
It felt so weird to talk with such certainty, to say, Andrea died, as if any of us even know what that means. We actually don't know what it means, I don't think.
Anderson Cooper
00:18:11
No, I mean it's true.
Megan Falley
00:18:14
'And 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. There's been a lot of little, just little nods maybe, or winks, cosmic rotations. I don't know.
Anderson Cooper
00:18:33
You feel that?
Megan Falley
00:18:35
I do. I really, I do, um, I mean, there've been some that feel like too wild to ignore and then there feel like other things where uh, maybe I'm like choosing to see it a bit more and and why wouldn't I make that choice? So I love saying that Andrea allegedly died. To my limited understanding of a body and a spirit, Andrea's... Language is very important to me, so if I feel like something is not quite getting it right, I'm going to make whatever adjustments I need.
Anderson Cooper
00:19:28
I think that idea...
Megan Falley
00:19:29
I invite you to try it, Anderson.
Anderson Cooper
00:19:31
Well, no, I mean, I'm crying because what you said is so unique and I think true. And yeah, we have no idea what this means. We have no idea what death means. I understand you played a song by Andrea's bedside. Could you tell us a little bit about the significance of it? Especially playing it at that moment.
Megan Falley
00:20:03
'So when the hospice nurses told me that they would sedate Andrea, I didn't actually understand what that meant. I thought that meant Andrea would be sort of loopy, but feeling- I didn't know it would mean pretty non-responsive, non-verbal. And I was in tremendous grief because I thought we would have more conversation. Or like when that time came, we would just talk about, at least say like, hey, it's gonna happen now and just have whatever our final words would be. And I felt robbed of that. But within an hour or so of having that intense bereft feeling, our friend, the musician Chris Pureka sent me a text message that said, you've never heard this and Andrea's never heard this, but Andrea wrote a love song for you. It's a song about their death and how they will come back to you. And I, I just want to send it to you now. And I when I first played it and you know, the hospice nurses tell you they can hear you keep talking. And I watched just their, like, I don't remember if it was their smile, twitch, or their eyebrow raise, but I saw some recognition in the face of what it was.
Anderson Cooper
00:21:42
Let's play some of that.
"Hold Down the Fort," by Chris Pureka and Andrea Gibson
00:21:51
Hold down the fort, cause I gotta go. Light on the water will carry me somehow. Don't say goodbye forever, not too far. The other side is just a stone's throw from love and you've got a great arm. You've got a great arm. You held the pen to my chest each hour you were writing. You said, ‘Every good poem is hell and heaven fighting.’ But there’s no gates where I’m going. I think that's a good thing, I want nothing kept out if I’m losing my everything ‘cause I had it. I had it. I had it all, I had you.
Anderson Cooper
00:23:23
That's extraordinary. I love those words, hold down the fort. Do you feel like you're holding down the fort?
Megan Falley
00:23:37
'Sure, yeah, I feel like um I am now- uh, Andrea carried and held so many people through through their art, their poetry was a lifeline for a lot of people dealing with mental health struggles, gender queerness, or really, heartbreak, anything. And now I sort of feel like in their death, I'm holding hundreds of thousands of people who lost Andrea.
Anderson Cooper
00:24:22
I saw on your Instagram an incredible moment between you two with an aging filter, an app that does sort of aging. Can you talk a little bit about what it is and I just, if it's okay, I'd love to show people that.
Megan Falley
00:24:40
Yeah, Andrea had received really hard news. That they'd had a metastasis on their bone, and this was about a year and a half ago. And I ended up on TikTok and saw that there was an aging filter. And I just something lit up in my head, which was like, Oh, I need Andrea to see me old and I need Andrea to see themselves old. But also I think the deeper knowledge that they would likely not see those images in a mirror and get the opportunity to see them somehow.
Anderson Cooper
00:25:20
Let's take a look.
Megan Falley
00:25:23
Today would have been your 50th birthday. I wanted you to see this day so badly, so did you. When you were only 48, you told people you were 50. That's how much you wanted to get here. I have a measly wrinkle collection compared to my end goal you once wrote. Now that you're gone, I see these videos of you and almost lose my mind with grief because it's proof of something that has always been true. I would have loved you at 80, at 100, at 142. When our friends complained about the physical evidence of getting older, the age spot, the skin sag, the detritus of living, it stung us both. We knew how unlikely it was that you would live to see your hair turn completely silver. But what is more valuable than silver in a loved one's hair?
Anderson Cooper
00:26:18
It's so beautiful.
Megan Falley
00:26:22
You know, it's so wild because they're so cute. Like, when I watch the film, I just think, God, you're so, like, I still have such a crush on them, which is a weird feeling, you know?
Anderson Cooper
00:26:36
A love letter from the afterlife. It's one thing to hear it while Andrea was there. I'm wondering, hearing it now that they're allegedly dead do you hear it differently? Do you hear things in it that you didn't hear before?
Megan Falley
00:26:53
The new line sort of hits me every time, which feels fortunate, but I really love the line, "I'm more with you than I ever could have been. So close, you look past me when wondering where I am." The day is when I find Andrea hard to find that's extremely comforting. That it's me who's missing them. Not Andrea not being there.
Anderson Cooper
00:27:24
Is there something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful for others?
Megan Falley
00:27:28
I think when I first saw the film again after Andrea died a lot of people would be like, how can you do that? How can you sit in it? How can sort of open this thing up again? And for me I can't imagine another way through, but to keep opening it up, to keep watching it, to keep sitting inside of it, and like it's such a gift to me that I just keep getting to throw myself back into the images of them or their words and hold them in that way. And so I feel like because I am so fully experiencing Andrea still is the reason that I'm not depressed because I'm not locking it away in the door and that's obviously like snot pouring down my face so it's not to say I'm not crying but I am not numb. Andrea would say that not shutting yourself off to grief or sadness or anger is that you can't shut yourself off to those things and keep the channel for joy open. That you have to allow yourself to feel every feeling that comes up so that you too can feel joy and feel love.
Anderson Cooper
00:28:58
'That, for me, has been one of the revelations of my life that I've only learned or maybe I'd heard it once before, but I only learned it and feel it in the last year or two of my life because I'm talking about what I've run my whole life from, which is grief and loss, and it's so true that you cannot have one without the other. You can't have joy without allowing yourself to feel sadness. And it's extraordinary to me that so many of us, and I hear from so many people who have run from grief their entire life and lived in this kind of middle ground. No high highs, and- to avoid the low lows, to avoid pain of feeling the loss of the person they love, they've robbed themselves, and I've robbed myself, of feeling tremendous joy. And yeah, I think that's such an important, an important thing that you bring up, and I'm glad you did. Is there anything else you want people to know? About Andrea, about anything.
Megan Falley
00:30:11
'I think what Andrea's main message was, um, what they most wanted to pass on is the idea that there's not, there are certain circumstances in life where we're kind of given a prescription of emotion or taught, like you get divorced or you lose somebody or you are sick or something happens and so you should feel you should feel mad at the world or you should come with this bitterness or something. I think Andrea wanted people to see that there isn't- that they found joy in what they did not believe that they could find joy in. And they want people to know that that's possible.
Anderson Cooper
00:31:05
Meg, long live Andre Gibson.
Megan Falley
00:31:10
Long live Andrea Gibson. Thank you so much.
Anderson Cooper
00:31:14
I'm rooting for you.
Megan Falley
00:31:17
Do you know that's how I sign all my books?
Anderson Cooper
00:31:20
'Are you kidding? It's so funny you say that, because I literally started saying this, I don't say it to everybody, but I started saying it this summer to some people who I am genuinely rooting for. I hadn't heard anybody really saying it, but I just started saying and the ripple effects of it are really fascinating. I said it to this guy named Jesse Itzler, who is all over Instagram. He's just this like force of nature. And I've met him years ago and I just think he's a lovely guy and like putting great things out into the world. And I just randomly said to him, you know, I'm rooting for you. And he kind of looked at me oddly and then he came back to me the next day because we were at this conference, he came back the next and he said, you I've been thinking about what you said about rooting for me and I think it's like the greatest way- it's the nicest thing to say to somebody. Like I'm in your corner. I'm rooting for you. I love that that's how you sign your books.
Megan Falley
00:32:17
Yeah, I've had a sign of it in my house. I also, the other way I told people is, yeah
Anderson Cooper
00:32:24
Man, life blows me away like this.
Megan Falley
00:32:25
I also say stay tender.
Anderson Cooper
00:32:27
Stay tender. I like that. That's good.
Megan Falley
00:32:31
Either one, it depends.
Anderson Cooper
00:32:34
Meg, thank you so much.
Megan Falley
00:32:36
Thank you so much.
Anderson Cooper
00:32:39
'Come See Me in the Good Light is now streaming on Apple TV. Next week on Thursday, February 12th join me at 9.15 p.m. Eastern for my live streaming show, All There Is Live. To watch, just go to cnn.com/allthereis. If you missed the live stream, it'll be posted the following day for a week on the site. If there's something you've learned in your grief that you think would be helpful for others, or you wanna tell us about your own grief experiences, feel free to leave us a voicemail at 1-404-827-1805. You can also send us a video message and email it to us at allthereisatcnn.com or send it to us on Instagram @allthereis. Thanks for listening.