Anderson Cooper

This is all there is.

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I started this podcast four years ago, going through old boxes of things my mom and dad and brother left behind when they died.

They're still in my basement.

It's been a while since I've tried to sort through them.

But like many of you, the pain of the past is never far away.

Many of you have left voicemails from long-ago losses that still echo in your lives today.

As Ken Burns said on an earlier podcast, the half-life of grief is endless.

Mariska Hargitay knows that very well.

Mariska's mom, actress Jane Mansfield, died when she was three.

She was raised by her father, Hungarian actor and bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay.

Jane Mansfield was killed in a car crash in 1967.

Mariska was in the car with her.

In her 20s, she discovered Mickey Hargitay was not her biological father.

An Italian singer, Nelson Sardelli, was.

After decades spent coming to terms with her past and wanting to learn more about the mother she doesn't remember, Mariska has made a remarkable documentary called My Mom Jane.

Did you feel that early on, this sense of loss and longing?

It's exhausting.

The voice which she put on, it's not who she was.

Your mom was three years old and in a car when her father died of a heart attack.