Tonya Mosley

Were you brought up religiously or culturally Jewish?

What was your bar mitzvah like?

Was it lavish?

When you were 12, your mother was diagnosed with leukemia.

She died when you were 15.

Were you very close?

What was it like watching her suffer when you were so young and you probably hadn't seen someone suffer like that before?

What caregiving responsibilities filled to you?

Your father was really busy with the catering business.

This is something I think about a lot.

I don't believe in an afterlife or anything, but there's part of me that really thinks the people I've lost in my family are somehow hearing what I say.

And there's something that they really want kept private.

And I tell somebody they know it, you know, like the people who have died, like they know it.

And I know that they that they're not alive.

I don't believe that they're in the room with me.

But there's a part of me that really believes they're hearing it.

And I wonder if you feel that way when you're on stage.

When your parents both died, you lived with your sister.

And then when she left, and I think this was when you were still in high school or after college, you moved in with your grandfather and you became his caregiver until he died.

What was it like for you to be taking care of him?