Photo: Kristina Bumphrey/Starpix/Shutterstock
Molly Shannonis continuing toopen upabout the tragic loss of her mother and sister as a child.
When the award-winning actress was just 4 years old, her mother, little sister Katie and cousin died in a car crash. Her father, who had been driving the vehicle while under the influence, was badly injured. He had to relearn how to walk — and raise Shannon and her older sister Mary, now 58, on his own.
“I was very heartbroken and very sad and just trying to hold it all together as a kid,” Shannon, 56, told theLos Angeles Timesin a recent interview. “There’s no way that you could feel that type of deep pain about your mother and your sister being dead, so you just hold it all in, and it comes up later in life.”
After the accident, Shannon said she and Mary went to live with their aunt for a period of time while her dad was in the hospital.
“The life that we left was not the same life we were coming back into. It just felt like everything was different,” she told the outlet. “And I wanted my aunt to do stuff like my mom. I was like, ‘No, my mom cuts the crust like that’ … Everything made me mad.”
Molly Shannon.
TheWhite Lotusstar also discussed feeling like her late sister Katie was missing out, especially when she would learn new things at school.
“We would learn to do fun stuff, like tie our shoes, and I felt like, ‘Katie, my little sister, should be here learning,” Shannon recalled to theTimes. " ‘She would have loved this. Katie would have loved doing the rabbits and tying her shoe.’ "
She later added that despite all the hardships, she feels “gratitude” for the life she has now.
“I look at life differently, losing my mom, and living beyond years that she ever got to live,” said Shannon, who shares daughter Stella and son Nolan with husband Fritz Chesnut, an artist.
She similarly noted the feelings of gratitude she has now.
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“I think any amount of time you have on earth with somebody is a good amount of time,” Shannon said. “Every day of my life, I think, ‘Oh my God. I’m alive. She never got to do this. I get to do it and I get to see my daughter apply to colleges this year.'”
“I’m seeing them as teenagers now and getting to be their mother and outlive what my mother was able to do,” she continued. “It’s profoundly healing, you know? It gives me gratitude.”
source: people.com
