Rita Wilson got candid about the devastating loss of her mother, Dorothy Wilson, and how her death fundamentally changed the actress’s relationship with her four children.
The star’s mother died in 2014 following a battle with Alzheimer’s disease, leaving Rita with thousands of unanswered questions and a well of heartbreak.
“Even though she was my best friend, and I thought I had asked her everything that I could possibly want to ask her, still there’s things I wish I had asked her, that I wish I had known,” she told People.
“You never forget when you lose your mom,” she added. Rita, who is also a celebrated singer-songwriter, recently reflected on Dorothy’s passing in an emotional song titled “Your Mother“.
“I know it’s hard for you to see/ There was someone else she used to be/ If you listen you will learn/ Every time the seasons turn/ That you’ll never have another/ Your mother,” the lyrics read.
The mother of four added that she hoped people would hear the song and “ask their moms the questions while they’re still alive.“
© Getty ImagesRita explained that since Dorothy’s death, she had been more open and honest with her children. She shares her sons, Chet, 35, and Truman, 30, with her husband, Tom Hanks, and is a proud stepmother to his kids, Colin, 48, and E.A., 43. “For my kids nowadays, I’m probably a bit more unfiltered with them,” she said.
“I just tell them things all the time, and we usually get a lot of laughs out of it, but it’s really that desire to just feel that you’re really known, that there’s no barriers to being with your family and with your children in that way, so that you can be honest and just have those conversations – because you never know.“
© Getty ImagesRita’s family history is steeped in secrecy, as she learned when appearing on the English TV show Who Do You Think You Are? in 2012. “What they found with my dad was that his story was so shocking and unusual that they stuck with his story,” she said on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast.
© FilmMagicShe discovered that her father, Hassan Halilov Ibrahimoff, had been married to a woman named Alice in Bulgaria and welcomed an infant son with her before the mother and child both died shortly after his birth.
© Instagram“He never said anything to us. I wish I could have talked to him about that,” she said on the podcast. “They kept things so private…I think if we were all more open with each other, then we all can see that we’re all in the same boat.”
Hassan escaped from a labor camp in communist Bulgaria in 1949 and immigrated to the US, where he met Rita’s mother and built a life with her. “He and my mom were married for 59 years, and they were an incredible couple and incredible parents,” she concluded. Rita’s parents
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