Melissa Etheridge Speaks of Losing Son Beckett in First Interview Since His Passing

Melissa Etheridge is opening up about the tragic death of her son, Beckett Cypher.

The 59-year-old musician spoke to Rolling Stone in a candid interview. Here’s what she had to say…

On grappling with the loss of her son, Beckett Cypher, who died in May at age 21 from causes related to an opiate addiction: “As the mother of someone who was addicted to opioids, it’s a struggle. You want to help your child. You want to make them all better. He was a young adult. 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. 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.”

On the guilt of losing her son: “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. So, you know, if that can help any parents who might be torturing themselves with that…I believe life is meant to be lived with as much joy as we can. But life is also contrast. Life is also up and down. 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.”

On healing through music: “The thing that makes life make sense has always been my music. 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.”

Here is what she said upon her return to social media for the first time since his passing.

For more from Melissa Etheridge, head to RollingStone.com.