Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story by Carol Burnett
Many people think of Carol Burnett as a lively and beloved comedian and entertainer best known for her long-running variety show, “The Carol Burnett Show.” Few, however, know the intimate and intricate bond that she shared with her firstborn daughter, Carrie Hamilton. Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story introduces readers to Carrie through Carol Burnett’s personal reflections on memories, diary entries, photographs and email conversations between the mother-daughter duo. Burnett honors her daughter’s memory by separating this touching tribute into two parts—one part focused on a memoir about their relationship amidst their struggles and successes, and the other dedicated to sharing the short story Carrie was writing at the time of her death at the age of 38 from lung cancer that metastasized to the brain. These deeply personal recollections about everything from Carrie’s teenage drug addiction to her career as an actress, writer, musician and director serve as a touching maternal tribute to a daughter whose zest for life and sparks of creativity were dimmed much too soon.
Part one of Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story commences with Carol Burnett’s humorous anecdote about her labor and delivery of Carrie. This section contains numerous stories about Carrie during her formative years. Once Burnett starts discussing Carrie’s teenage drug addiction battle, her reflections are interspersed with occasional diary entries from that troubled era. After succeeding in becoming sober, Carrie resolves to live life to the fullest and to satisfy her creative juices by dabbling in acting, writing, music and directing. Her mantra in life, in her own words written to Burnett, could best be described as “more than anything, we are remembered for our smiles: the ones we share with our closest and dearest, and the one we bestow on a total stranger who needs it right then, and God has put us there to deliver.”
“More than anything, we are remembered for our smiles: the ones we share with our closest and dearest, and the one we bestow on a total stranger who needs it right then, and God has put us there to deliver.”-Carrie Hamilton
The majority of part one of the book serves to introduce the short story to follow in part two as Burnett shares personal emails between Carrie and herself. These emails detail Carrie’s own musings about her writing process, philosophical thoughts about life, and chronicles her decision to go on her own journey to Graceland in order to do research for the story she is writing. Burnett’s diary entries reappear when Carrie and her family receive the devastating news that she has lung cancer. At first, it seemed she might beat it, despite it having spread to the brain. But less than three weeks before she died, her family learned that there would be no operation for the brain tumors because they had continued to spread since the initial prognosis. Carrie’s final request to her mother was to have Carol finish the story that she had started.
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Burnett reflects on seeing her now-gone beloved daughter for the first time, remarking that, “I saw peace on her beautiful face. She looked serene. I was relieved for my baby. She wasn’t going to ever suffer again. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘It’s not supposed to happen this way. I’m the one who should go first.” This captures the conflicting emotions associated with grieving the loss of a loved one, especially those of a parent losing a child.
“I saw peace on her beautiful face. She looked serene. I was relieved for my baby. She wasn’t going to ever suffer again. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘It’s not supposed to happen this way. I’m the one who should go first.”
Devoting the second part of the book to sharing her daughter’s unfinished short story demonstrates Burnett’s way of honoring her daughter’s final request. The insight that readers now possess about Carrie allows us to fully embrace the characters and realize just how powerful and creative the story’s author was. The book, as a whole, makes you realize how important it is to embrace life and share happiness and love with those closest to you and with fellow humans in general.
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