Sharon Stone further explains why she felt “joy, relief and emptiness” after the death of her maternal grandfather Clarence Lawson.
The “Basic Instinct” actress detailed the reasoning behind that sentiment in her memoir “The Beauty of Living Twice” during an appearance on the “All There Is With Anderson Cooper” podcast on Friday.
“He was an abuser who abused my mother and did everything he could to get to us to abuse her,” Stone, 68, told Anderson Cooper, 59.
Stone continued, “And he wasn’t an old man. He was someone we tried to avoid at all costs.”
In her book, Stone revealed that she and her sister Kelly were abused by their grandfather, and that Lawson also received support from her abusive grandmother. Ever since her daughters were toddlers, she would lock them in their room when her husband came to visit.
At Lawson’s funeral, Stone recalled reaching into his casket to confirm his death.
“I poked at him, and a strange sense of satisfaction that he was finally dead hit me like a ton of ice,” she wrote. “I looked at (Kelly) and she understood. She was 11 years old and it was over.”
“Experiencing death for the first time as a child is a very strange thing: joy, relief and emptiness,” she continues.
In a Friday interview with Cooper, Stone reflected on the funeral, recalling that it felt colder than other memorial services.
“People usually wander in, sit down, and talk. At funerals, there’s usually a calm, caring, hand-holding, thoughtful attitude,” Stone said, clarifying that “there was nothing like that” at Lawson’s ceremony.
But all she felt was “joy, relief, and emptiness.”
“That picture of a strange emptiness, a good emptiness, will stay in my mind forever,” she told Ms. Cooper.
