[Joe Biden  Presidential Candidate:] Janet, you lost your brother, you understand. It really takes a part of your soul, I mean it is and what I tell people is that it's going to take a long time, but the person you lost is still with you. Still part of you. And I what happened to me when I got a phone call, when I was in Washington, after I was elected before I got sworn in. They put a first responder on the phone, God love her, and she said you've got to come home, there's been an accident. What happened? A tractor I said they're dead. Your wife and daughter are dead and your son. And I remember thinking to myself, my God. I just remember being so angry. Angry with everything. I shouldn't say it, but angry with god. Just angry. And I remember people came up to me and say meaning well I understand. You feel like saying you have no idea. You have no idea. You know they mean well, but the people who, in fact, have been through it, you know they understand. And it gives you solace that they made it. They just you just want to know, can I make it through? And I had an older gentleman, 35 years my senior and former elected official in the state of New Jersey call me, former governor. He said I understand. I almost said to him and he said, I was walking home from lunch and I was the Attorney General and my wife came, a woman who helps out once a seek came running across the mall saying she's dead, she's dead. Your wife just died. And I realized he did know. He said, you know what I did? And my advice it helped me anyway is two things. One, he said get a piece of graph paper and mark every single day how you felt from one to ten that day. Because you know you lost your brother, when a thought would come to you, after a while, you'd be just as down as the moment it happened. He said don't look at it for six months. Mark it on the graph paper one to ten. The downs will be just as far down. But you know your going to make it when they get further and further and further apart. You still get down.
[Anderson Cooper, Cnn:] It never goes away.
[Biden:] But it never goes away. But, but that's when you know you can make it. That's when you know you can embrace the family members that are left. That's when you know that you can make a contribution. It's like when I lost my son. Beau. I remember him saying to me, I wrote a book about it, unfortunately. That was harder than I thought it was going to be. I wanted people to know what he was like. And he looked at me when he when we'd go home on Fridays to have dinner with him, he lived about a mile from us. And he asked his wife to take the kids upstairs. And my wife had gone home to change before she came back, we got right off the train. He said, dad, look at me, dad. He said I'm going to be OK no matter what happens. He knew he only had months to go. And he said promise me, dad, promise me you'll be OK. And I said, Beau, I'll be OK. And I know people make fun of it, but we had a thing in our family. Dad, promise me as a Biden, give me a word as a Biden you'll be OK. Because that's a sacred thing we do. And I said I will, Beau. But I knew what he meant. He meant, dad, don't do what you want to do. You want to turn inward. You want to just wall yourself off. You don't want to be part of it all. He just wanted me to make sure that the things that have animated my life my whole life I didn't walk away from. He knew I'd take care of the kids, he knew I would be there for the family. But it's the thing the other thing I would strongly urge people and they can't do it now. They just can't even think through the fog right now. But eventually what will take you through is purpose. Find a purpose. Something that matters. Particularly something connected to the loss you just had. I'm being too personal I get up in the morning and I think to myself in the morning, is he proud of me? Am I doing what he wants? And I'm sure that it's the same way with you and a whole lot of other people. And at a moment there will come a time when you think of the person you lost it takes a long while where you get a smile before you get a tear. That's when you know you're going to make it. And so many people have gone through what I've been through without the help I had. Think of all the heroes out there walking those streets today. They get up every single morning. They put one foot in front of the other and they move. They move.
[Cooper:] My mom used to say this saying from a Scottish philosopher. The sayings is be kind because everybody you meet is fighting a great battle.
[Biden:] Exactly right.
[Cooper:] That's the important thing.
[Biden:] Kierkegaard also said, faith sees best in the dark. Sometimes it's really dark, but there is hope.
[Brooke Baldwin, Cnn:] Wow. That was Anderson's interview with the former Vice President Joe Biden. Just reading Dr. Biden's book recently and she talks about exactly what he said. Biden, tell me you're OK as a Biden. Anderson, thank you so much for sharing that. We are here in Dayton, Ohio. Coming up, standing next to me is a young man who is being praised for what he did here. Shielding his girlfriend in the midst of rapid gunfire here early, early Sunday morning. We will talk to him as he has now come back to this part of Dayton for the first time since that evening. We'll be back.