Gary Sinise: ‘The Hole In The Heart Is Always There’

The actor and philanthropist Gary Sinise lost his 33-year-old son Mack to a rare spine cancer called chordoma in January 2024 — the same week Mack's debut album went to press. In conversation with Anderson Cooper, Sinise describes what it means to carry a child through a terminal illness while refusing to accept the outcome, and what he discovered in his son's phone after he was gone.

The Fight That Never Had a Plan B

Mack Sinise was diagnosed with chordoma at 27, after years of tailbone pain. The tumor, likely present from birth, had grown slowly along his spine. The same week Mack was diagnosed, Sinise's wife Moira was undergoing treatment for stage-three breast cancer. She went into remission; Mack did not.

Sinise describes himself as "the dad who was the fighter next to him, fighting every minute." He spent years searching for drugs, doctors, and experimental options. He never had a direct conversation with Mack about what might happen if the treatments failed. "I didn't want to be thinking about the final days with him because I was always hopeful that we were gonna find something," Sinise says. "I thought if I'd had that conversation with him, it might signal to him that I was giving up."