Mary Tyler Moore died about a week ago. For someone famous for her smile, she faced an extraordinary amount of grief. This was true even by the time she was playing her iconic role as career woman Mary Richards in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Her parents were alcoholics. When she was still a child, Moore arranged to live with her aunt and choose only to see her parents on special occasions. She herself developed a drinking problem when she was on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and only sought treatment years later.
When she died, she had no family except her third husband. Her sister died of a drug and alcohol overdose in 1978 just after “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ended. Her brother died of cancer in 1992 after she tried to assist him in a botched suicide attempt.
Her only child died in 1980 because of a hair trigger of a gun, which went off in his hands.
Grief? She had plenty of it.
We rarely know much about other people’s grief. A friend tells me about her health condition, and I glimpsed how difficult it is. But you wouldn’t know about it unless she mentioned it.
Grief can be our hidden burden. . Yet bravely, sometimes smiling, we go onward, despite it.
Source: The New York Times