When my husband died in 2006, I didnt want to be Mitzi Gaynor anymore.
I remember that, before John Lennon died, everyone was saying that Rolling Stone couldn't do good reporting anymore. But when he died, they wrote this amazing issue, as they should have about Lennon. They did that when Elvis died, too.
I have to say that since my mother died, I am not the same person anymore. My life has changed a great deal because it's really unbearable to think you can't see her anymore or talk to her anymore.
My friendship with Mitzi was like the friendship that many children have with their pets. My mother and father thought it was "good for me" to have a dog for a companion. Well it was good for me, but it was only many years after she died that I began to understand how good it was, and why.
When you are not missing something, longing for something, you don't really think about it that much. It's like that girlfriend you don't want to have anymore. You don't think about her anymore. Or ex-husband. You just don't.
In 1971, my mother died of cancer and within a year my first husband Alec Ross died, also from cancer.
I knew about my grandmother's husband who died in the Albion coal disaster. But I didn't know a brother died in the same disaster because of the health and safety, which was terrible.
I wished I died in that attack with my cousin, with my south Vietnamese soldiers. I wish I died at that time so I won't suffer like that anymore... it was so hard for me to carry all that burden with that hatred, with that anger and bitterness.
Three days after my brother died, my father was in the hospital. He just did not want to live anymore. Before, he was fighting and loving life.
My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.
I was in the Minnesota state Senate from 2000 until 2006. In 2006, I was urged to run for Congress, I did. And I've been here ever since.
I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.
I had gotten to the point where I just didn't want to perform anymore - I didn't want to be on the chopping block anymore. I started to want to withdraw and retreat from it.
I remember my grandmother's husband dying. But I think I was older. I think I was 7 or 8 when he died. But I remember that being the first real person I knew who died, and I - and that my parents didn't let me go to the funeral. And I remember feeling like it was really unfair.
My worst moment was in 2006, in Germany, without any doubt! The defeat in the knockout phase of the World Cup 2006 against Portugal.
I don't believe in regretting - one should try to move on. My mum was good at that. She was deeply in love with my father, and he died when I was nine. She remarried, and her second husband died, too. I saw the grieving process she went through. My mother had this way of moving on. It was a fine trait.