Melissa Rivers talks about the trauma she and her mother, the late comedian Joan Rivers, faced when Melissa’s father, Edgar Rosenberg, died by suicide in 1987 by overdosing on prescription pills in a Philadelphia hotel room.
At the time, Joan said her husband was clinically depressed, believing it to be due to medication he was taking after a 1984 heart attack.
Now, speaking to PEOPLE, Melissa says the family faced unspeakable grief afterward — and that her relationship with her mom was broken. “Suicide is very complicated for people who survive it,” explains Melissa, 56. “It was very painful. It was very difficult.”
In a 1993 PEOPLE cover story, the duo explained that they barely spoke for a year after Edgar’s death.
“Melissa blamed me,” Joan said at the time, noting that Edgar died shortly after the couple divorced. – We tried to move on with our lives, but we were both so broken that we couldn’t help each other.
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Melissa says they eventually realized they needed each other.
“It took therapy. It took time,” he says now of how they mended their relationship. “I went into a full-blown crisis where I ended up in an abusive relationship, and when I called her for help, she passed. It took another major crisis to heal from another crisis.”
Melissa adds that after they talked again, they channeled their grief into bringing the topic of suicide to the public.
“We’re really into lending our name to suicide prevention,” says Melissa. “At that time, suicide was still not something that was discussed. We’re talking about 1987 when people thought it was still shameful or they thought it ran in families. Nobody would have known what to tell you.”
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“I spent a good part of my time working on destigmatization,” she continues. “I’m the co-chair of Didi Hirsch Health Mental Services and Suicide Prevention. And I’m always available to people when they’re going through it. I’m really honest about it: It sucks.”
Melissa says she prefers not to sugarcoat suicide for anyone.
“Anytime someone loses someone, whether it’s suicide or any other reason, I call my friends and go, here’s the honest part, it’s shit. There’s nothing good about this right now. It’s gonna be shit for a while, and you’ll get over it. ”
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Edgar Rosenberg and Joan Rivers in 1987.
Harry Langdon/Getty
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She says that almost immediately after losing her father, her mom, Joan, decided to leave Los Angeles, where Melissa grew up, and move to New York.
“My parents always felt like fish out of water in LA, and it really became acute for my mother after my dad died,” he says of Joan, who later died in 2014 at the age of 81.
“It just wasn’t who they were. It wasn’t who she was. And apparently my parents had an agreement that when one of them died, the other would go back to New York,” Melissa recalls. I have no idea why they made that pact, but I think it’s because neither of them liked living in LA.”
He adds: “They were the least cool people in Hollywood. My mum used to joke that we were lucky my father didn’t sleep in a tie and that their friends were really outside the English film community. They weren’t hanging out in Malibu with a gold chain, open shirt and bell bottoms. pants.”
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Line by dialing 988, texting “STRENGTH” to the crisis line at 741741 or going to 988lifeline.org.
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Source: HIS Education