In May, Melissa Etheridge’s son Beckett Cypher died at the age of 21 from causes related to opioid addiction. Now, Melissa’s opened up to Rolling Stone about coming to terms with that loss.
“It was a good year of us knowing he was really in trouble…and it wasn’t a surprise,” Melissa says of Beckett’s death.
“You want to help your child. You want to make them all better…[but] there were things out of my control…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 adds, “There will always be that that place in my heart and my soul that that has a little bit of, ‘Oh, what could I have done? And is it my fault he ended this way?’…and it just gets smaller and smaller, because it doesn’t serve me anymore…so, if that can help any parents who might be torturing themselves with that, I hope so…I still struggle with it.”
Beckett, whom Melissa shared with her ex-partner, Julie Cypher, was conceived with sperm from rock legend David Crosby.
“He’s really sad,” Melissa says when asked whether she’d spoken to Crosby, who’s also struggled with drug addiction.
“Of course, he thinks that somehow his own biology was part of the reason that Beckett was addicted to opioids, but…we all have that capacity to be addicted,” Melissa notes, adding of Crosby, “He’s such a beautiful man and…he gave me an opportunity to be a parent and I’m so grateful for that.”
