The Maze That Doesn't End

Mikaela Shiffrin, the most decorated alpine skier in history, lost her father Jeff in February 2020 when he fell off the roof of their Colorado home and suffered a severe head injury. He was 65. She was 25. In this conversation with Anderson Cooper, who lost his own father at age ten and his brother to suicide, Shiffrin describes grief not as a wave that crashes and recedes, but as a maze she keeps navigating without ever finding the exit.

The Hospital Room and the Video

Shiffrin was in Italy preparing for a race when her brother called. Her father had been in Europe visiting her and her mother just days earlier. By the time she got to Denver, Jeff Shiffrin—a respected anesthesiologist—was on life support, kept alive only by machines. The entire Colorado medical community had mobilized to try to save him, but he was already gone.

That night, after everyone cleared out, Shiffrin climbed into the hospital bed with her father. She put his arm around her and laid her head on his chest. "I could still feel his heart beating," she says. She stayed there for nine hours. She heard his heart stop.