In a rare interview, Anderson Cooper spoke to his mother Gloria Vanderbilt about his brother Carter's suicide on his daytime talk show on Monday.
It was a family tragedy that Cooper said they talked about "all the time." He listened intently as his mother, who is 87, recounted the details of his brother's horrific death two decades ago: begging him to come down from the balcony of their New York home and watching him let go of the ledge.
The socialite and former fashion designer told a teary-eyed Cooper, “There was a moment when I thought I was going to jump after him, but then I thought of you and it stopped me from doing that. He choked up after his mother said that there is never closure, unable to finish the sentence he had started. After regaining his composure, he continued, "When I hear people use that word, it's like a TV word."
It is not the first time that Cooper has opened up about his older brother's suicide. He has long discussed the tragedy as a defining moment in his life, and devoted considerable attention to the trauma it caused him in his book. he has mentioned his brother's suicide twice before on his daytime show, first in an interview with Amy Winehouse's parents and then in a discussion about Russell Armstrong's suicide with the cast of Housewives of Beverly Hills.