Saturday
TRANSCRIPT: Larry King Talks with ELIZABETH EDWARDS / Tues. May 12, 9 pm ET
t.
EDWARDS ON THE BOOK, HER HUSBAND & CHILDREN
KING: More from your book. This is the saddest part of all.
"It cannot bring him back. As much as I tried, as much as I prayed, I
could not let him go, which is what people who cared about me wanted. So
many people thinking they were taking care of me asked if I was over
Wade's death yet. "I will never be over it," I would tell them.
I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a child. It's unfathomable
to me.
EDWARDS: It is.
KING: A hundred times worse than infidelity and (INAUDIBLE).
EDWARDS: Yes.
KING: How did you deal with it?
EDWARDS: Well, the first thing I did was...
KING: How did he die?
EDWARDS: Wade was 16 years old and had been driving for a good period of
time. He worked in his father's law office and drove for them. He had
probably driven 15,000 miles, not an immense amount of experience, but
no tickets or anything.
And he was driving to the beach in a section of eastern North Carolina
where the wind pushed his car to the side of the road and it flipped.
And it killed him and the boy next to him walked away, which was -- I'm
really glad that he did.
KING: The wind?
EDWARDS: The wind. It was a strong wind. In fact, I got letters from
other people saying that their cars had also been moved. In fact, a
woman who drove the same kind of car that Wade drove, that she had
precisely the same problem where, you know, these strong winds would
come and...
KING: Where were you? How did you hear about it?
EDWARDS: John had picked -- Cate and I were on a trip, and John picked
us up from the airport and we were going to follow to the beach. But
before we got to the point of getting into the car, the highway patrol
pulled up. And the highway patrol pulling into your house really can
only mean...
KING: Was he a senator then?
EDWARDS: No, he was not. We were just regular citizens. And...
KING: And the highway patrol told you?
EDWARDS: The highway patrol told us. You know, it was a tape that plays
in my head a lot more than any of this other stuff that's covered by the
press so closely.
KING: What do you say? What do you do? This little girl was with you?
EDWARDS: Our daughter Cate, who's now 27, was 14 at the time. And she
was upstairs. I went to the door and John was in our room, where we all
converged.
But the first thing I did was sort of fall to the floor and just
screaming, "No!" That is actually how I felt. You know, it can't be true.
And as I moved through next weeks, first days being you're just in
shock. But as I moved through the next weeks and months, I had this idea
that God was going to find some way to turn back time and he was going
to be alive.
I would see somebody mowing their lawn and say, no, no, no. Or don't
build a porch or don't -- if everything stays the same, God can do what
I always hoped he would, and that was to save the innocents. And I
realized, of course, in time that that wasn't so. And only when I came
to that recognition was I able to incorporate Wade as a memory, rather
than Wade who was a boy who was going to return next week into my life.
KING: Do you think about him a lot?
EDWARDS: All the time. All the time. And he's a member of our family. He
didn't quit being that.
The younger children -- Emma Claire so poignantly one time came in and
said, "You know what makes me really sad about Wade?" And I said,
"What?" And she said, "That Jack never got to know him." Well, she
didn't either, but she thought she did because he was so much a part of
our family life.
KING: You were 48 and 50 when the next two came. I was. I had my AARP
card in front of me when I was pregnant with Jack.
EDWARDS: We'll be back with our remaining moments with Elizabeth Edwards.
The book is "Resilience."
Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: One more from the book.
"As I have felt further less-devastating blows in the years after Wade's
death, I cannot understand how I merited these blows. What did I do?
Even though I think I know better, I still continued to ask and
continued to wonder."
Do you have any guilt?
EDWARDS: Actually, guilt is one of the things you might go through in
grieving. I don't really feel guilt. There's a lot of times when I've
certainly wondered, what did I do wrong to cause Wade's death? I tried
to buy him a safe car and, you know, we did all that work to make
certain that he was in a safe vehicle, and yet this happened.
Did I not teach him enough? But, you know, in truth, I knew it was one
of the things.
With the cancer, you know, did I drink the wrong things or eat the wrong
things? I'm not a smoker, I don't have -- I don't engage in very much
conduct that might create this. But you still have to ask yourself those
questions. And certainly with the latest indiscretion, you know, what
did I do to cause this to happen?
And I have to recognize with each of these things, they just happen. You
didn't have to do something wrong to justify them. You still sort of
wonder, is there some grand plan where you've done something someplace else?
KING: Did it test your faith?
EDWARDS: It absolutely tests your faith. You have to think about what
God means to you. The God that I believed in before...
KING: Is not the same God?
EDWARDS: ... is not the same God. There's a great line in -- Bill Moyers
did a show, "Genesis," and somebody -- at one point somebody said, "You
get the God you have, not the God you want."
The God I wanted was going to intervene. He was going to turn time back.
The God I wanted was -- I was going to pray for good health and he was
going to give it to me.
Why in this complicated world, with so much grief and pain around us
throughout the world, I could still believe that, I don't know. But I
did. And then I realized that the God that I have was going to promise
me salvation if I lived in the right way and he was going to promise me
understanding. That's what I'm sort of asking for, what -- let me
understand why I was tested.
KING: Why.
How do you face the possibility of not being around?
EDWARDS: It's really hard. I try to organize their lives so that they
will have signs of my presence and memories.
Emma Claire wanted -- asked for her birthday a trip with me. And even
though I'm thinking of an 11-year-old, and I'm carrying the luggage and
doing -- can I really handle all that? I still want to give it to her
even though I think it's going to be a hard -- a physically hard thing
to do.
KING: Have someone carry the luggage.
EDWARDS: Yes. Actually, I've been trying to talk her into one of these
tours where they -- you know, you just arrive at the hotel and the
luggage...
KING: Why not? You know, what's really double sad, if, God forbid, you
left, John would probably be double crushed. Guilt plus...
EDWARDS: I completely agree with that. And in fact, one of the things --
we've talked about that and talked about his -- you know, his work in
rebuilding trust and how it's really important that he get to that place
in time so that he understands that what he took away he did his very
best job to put back.
KING: Many times when a child dies parents divorce.
EDWARDS: They do. Seventy percent, I think. Some huge, huge number.
KING: Seventy, yes. Guilt toward each other, anger.
EDWARDS: Right.
KING: That never went on with you?
EDWARDS: Never. We went through this process together, and I will never
-- you know, it's one of the things that keeps us together now, is that
he was so spectacular.
And I realized later -- at first I thought we just need exactly the same
thing. I realized later he was actually giving me gifts all along. The
things I needed were the things he did.
I needed to go to the grave every day. So though he didn't need to and
sometimes didn't want to, he went anyway so that we would be together
and we would feel each other's strength as we tried to deal with this
strategy.
KING: You OK?
EDWARDS: I am OK.
KING: Thanks, dear.
EDWARDS: Thank you.
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Rebecca
