Gwyneth and Bruce Paltrow in 2001.Photo: George De Sota/Getty Images
Gwyneth Paltrowis opening up about her grieving process nearly 20 years since the death of her dad Bruce Paltrow.
After the funeral, she went back to London where she was living, and she remembered, “I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought I was having a heart attack. The only reason I didn’t call the emergency services is because I didn’t know that in England you dial 999; in America it’s 911. Honestly, I thought I was dying. It was really, really tough.”
“The first year was just beyond— I don’t know how we all got through it, my mother, my brother and I. It was pretty messed up. Anyone will tell you, who loses a love of their life like that, there’s just no other way but through,” the Goop founder said. “You just try to process your grief and keep going.”
She said one “upside” of “having him die so young” was that she “had so much life left to build.”
Gwyneth Paltrow.Rachel Murray/Getty Images
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“I hadn’t been married yet. I hadn’t had kids yet. I hadn’t really found myself yet. I still had that opportunity to continue to, I don’t know— I had all these chapters left,” explained Gwyneth. “What’s so sad is he’s not a part of them, but at the same time, he was such an amazing part of the foundation.”
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“For years, I would go into kind of the deepest depression of all time around my birthday and then I thought: ‘I’ve got to reframe this somehow. My father would not want this for me,'” she said on theArmchair Expertspodcastback in March 2019.
The mom of two also gave namesakes to her children that honor her parents — she shares daughterApple Blythe Alison, 17, and sonMoses Bruce Anthony, 16, with exChris Martin.
Also on theArmchair Expertsappearance, Gwyneth said she still has a “hard time” with the death of her father, who directed her in his last-ever movie, 2000’sDuets. “I still have a hard time with it,” she said at the time. “He was such an intentional father, and he was so observant and so deeply supportive and set us up to win all the time.”
source: people.com
