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are artists by nature. They saw in each other that need to create, and they connected on that level. They also had this very deep bond. My parents were married for thirty-two years when my mom passed away, and when they first got together, no one thought they would last. Allison: Why did nobody think they would last? Brooklyn: It was a few things. They both had strong personalities. They both were extremely driven. It was also an interracial relationship [in the ‘70s]. Also, the relationship had so much visibility. I think there was that dynamic where people thought that under the pressure, it was not going to last. The things that bonded them together were that they both had a very strong sense of faith and God and in family. They both loved to create, and they did that well with each other. They were very symbiotic in the way they wrote songs together, and they had a very deep love that translated through all the trials and tribulations they came across. Allison: In the documentary, when your mom was diagnosed with lung cancer, she was not a complainer. She did not want her illness to take center stage and she didn’t even really want it to be a thing. She didn’t want to address the elephant in the room. That is kind of how it was portrayed. On the day-to-day, at home with family, what was the process she went through in dealing with her diagnosis? Brooklyn: My mother was extremely strong as a person. I think her decision not to share [her diagnosis] with the world was that she was a woman of faith, and she really believed that God was going to heal her. She wanted to put all the positive energy out there for that and only wanted people around her that would give her that energy. When you are in the public eye you end of carrying a lot of people’s emotions for them. She didn’t think she could carry other people’s fear about her illness or their expectations of what it would look like. She just really wanted the time to focus on herself and her family. I think she tried to just walk that out. I was kind of right in the middle of it with her, my dad, and my aunt, and trying to be there day to day. I had her eat healthy and do all the things for her to have those moments where she could feel the best she could under those circumstances, and she was a trooper; one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. Even the doctor said, “Any other person would be in the hospital now.” My mom never ended up in the hospital. She just had a strength and a will that was beyond anybody that I’ve ever experienced before and she passed at home in Naples, Florida. Allison: Was there a moment where she thought, “Okay, this is happening, this is it, it’s my time.”? Brooklyn: She never verbalized that. I think there was a moment where I could see her wrestling with it internally, but we didn’t talk about it. She fought until the end. Allison: She also had a precedent setting lawsuit where she sued her original label, Casablanca Records for her publishing rights before moving to Geffen Records. Brooklyn: I don’t think it was about the publishing, specifically. I think it was more a contractual obligation, than the publishing. We thought about unpacking that whole thing within the film and it was just very weedy in terms of the legalese of it all. She just wanted to be out of her contract, and I think there were some changes at the label. She sued to get out of it and to be able to