Singer and mother Melissa Etheridge is grieving the death of her son, Beckett. The 21-year-old struggled with an opioid addiction and died from an overdose. Melissa has spoken about her family's grief a few times before, sharing updates on Twitter about how everyone is doing. But now she's opening up, sharing intimate details about her son's addiction and his death.
It's been three months since the star's son died. Now the singer is ready to talk about how incredibly difficult it is to navigate parenting someone with addiction struggles. She talked to Rolling Stone this week about being Beckett's mom. "As the mother of someone who was addicted to opioids, it's a struggle," she said. "You want to help your child. You want to make them all better. He was a young adult."
As most parents of addicts know, sometimes addiction means that you can't save your child. It's a truly helpless feeling, as Melissa reveals.
On May 13, Melissa shared the devastating news with her followers that her son had died. She wrote on Instagram, "Today I joined the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to opioid addiction. My son Beckett, who was just 21, struggled to overcome his addiction and finally succumbed to it today. … My heart is broken."
Now she's sharing more about how it felt to try to parent a child in the throes of addiction. She talked to Rolling Stone about coming to terms with the idea that her son might die and that, ultimately, he had to make his own choices. She couldn't save him on her own. "There were things out of my control, of course. And there came a time when I needed to really sit down with myself and say, 'I can't save him. I can't give up my life and go try to live his life for him.' And I had to come up against the possibility that he might die. But I had to be able to go on living," she said.
"Of course it's nothing a parent ever wants. But as a human being, I just needed to be at peace with a troubled son who did the best he could, who believed what he believed and then his life ended way, way too soon."
It's an absolutely heart-wrenching reality. But it's the same one that all parents of addicts must face at some point.
She continued, talking about the guilt she sometimes still feels, and will likely always feel, as a result of his death. "There will always be that that place in my heart and my soul that that has a little bit of, 'Oh, what could what could I have done? And is it my fault he ended this way?' and all that sort of thing. And it just gets smaller and smaller, because it doesn't serve me anymore, and where he is now, he certainly doesn't want me to take that on."
Still, Melissa is using music to help heal her soul. She says that's what she's always done, and now it's more important than ever. During the interview, she showed off her garage, which is also a music studio and has become a truly healing space in the wake of this tragedy.
"The thing that makes life make sense has always been my music," she shared. "I started with, 'what is that appropriate? How I get in front of people when, they know what I'm going through?' … [But] it gives us something to do every day [to] get through this time, and it's really just saved us."
It's pretty miraculous that Melissa is finding such amazing strength right now, but she's been playing music as much as possible. She's even resumed her livestream concerts, throwing herself back into her art. To some, it might seem strange that she's able to do so so early on in her journey through grief. Losing a child is one of the most challenging things that any person can go through. To Melissa, it just makes sense.
Still, her courage is incredibly inspiring. "I believe life is meant to be lived with as much joy as we can. But life is also a contrast. Life is also up and down," she said. "I've lived enough of it now to know. And you can't lay down. You can't be shattered. You can't die and give up. You know, that's what my son did. It's to be lived. It's to learn. I still struggle with it but that's what I can say."
Unfortunately, there are so many parents who have to go through the same kind of grief that Melissa is struggling with right now. But through talking so openly about her pain, and her inevitable healing, she's helping to show others that they can find a way to move forward. Life will never be the same after the death of a child, but it is still worth living.
Melissa is the mother to three other children — Bailey, 23, and 13-year-old twins Johnnie Rose and Miller Steven. She certainly has a lot to keep living for. It seems like her children, her music, and her unbreakable strength will keep her going.
