Angelina Jolie Pays Tribute to Late Mother Marcheline Bertrand
In a touching essay for the New York Times, Angelina Jolie pays tribute to her late mother Marcheline Bertrand.
In her piece, the actress spoke on how profoundly her mother’s 2007 death from ovarian cancer affected her. Marcheline was only 56.
“I lost my mother in my thirties,” she wrote. “When I look back to that time, I can see how much her death changed me. It was not sudden, but so much shifted inside. Losing a mother’s love and warm, soft embrace is like having someone rip away a protective blanket.”
In 2015, Angelina underwent preventative surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes, two years after undergoing a double mastectomy: “I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer,'” she said at the time.
“When my father had an affair, it changed her life. It set her dream of family life ablaze. But she still loved being a mother,” she wrote of her mom and her dad, Jon Voight.
Several years after her mother’s death, Angelina got a small tattoo of the letter “W” on her right palm, signifying the Rolling Stones song “Winter,” which her mom would sing to her as a baby.
“As the ‘W’ faded on my hand, so did that feeling of home and protection,” she wrote. “Life has taken many turns. I’ve had my own loss and seen my life take a different direction. And it hurt more than I imagined it ever would.”
Wow… what an incredible legacy she’s leaving.