Five months after her motherNaomi Judd’s suicide on April 30, following a long struggle withdepression, daughterWynonna Juddreflects on her family’s heartbreaking loss.
“I can’t quite wrap my head around it and I don’t know that I ever will. That sheleft the way she did,” she tells PEOPLE. “That’s how baffling and cunning mental illness is. You have to make peace with the fact that you don’t know. Sometimes there are no answers.”
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“So think about that and apply it to every stinking part of life, including death,” Wynonna, 58, continues. “With the same determination she had to live, she was determined to die. It’s so hard to comprehend how someone can be so strong and yet so vulnerable.”
Wynonna Judd.Jim Wright
In her grief, Wynonna did what she knew best: “Just go to the next step. Then go two more. Sometimes that’s enough.” That meant returning to the music she and her mom had loved making together andgoing forwardwithThe Judds: The Final Tour.
It was a reunion they had planned to do together — but now Wynonna is singing alongside some of country’s biggest names, includingFaith Hill,Martina McBride,Little Big TownandTrisha Yearwood, in celebration of her mom’slife and legacy. “I have to celebrate the joy as much as I can,” she explains. “That’s part of the reason I’m doing the tour.”
Wynonna Judd on the cover of PEOPLE.Jim Wright
The last time Naomi and Wynonna saw one another was at the April 11 CMT Awards, where theysang their hit song"Love Can Build a Bridge." “The last thing I said to her was ‘I love you,’ and I’m so grateful for that,” Wynonna says.
“I’ve accepted it as much as I possibly, humanly can,” she explains of her mother’sunexpected death at age 76. “Acceptance and then surrender, and what comes after is finding meaning.”
Naomi and Wynonna Judd.The Tyler Twins
Throughout, the singer says, she has learned to remember compassion. “I have a saying that was on a t-shirt my mom wore in the ’70s that said, ‘Keep on Truckin.’ You wake up in hell? Keep on truckin' — and now I’m walkin' it. When you deal with suicide, there is so much mystery there. What was she thinking in her final moments, what drove her to say I’m done? She’s a tough son of a bitch. Yet she was done and she was in too much pain. I don’t know what to do with that except to have compassion.”
And so Wynonna continues to find strength in her family, her faith and music, the very thing that had so deeply connected the mother and daughter duo.
“I will take every available opportunity to celebrate life because everything is a gift in this life,” she explains. “Your breath, your heartbeat, the next day. Maybe her greatest legacy was in darkness, there is light.”
For all the details on Wynonna Judd’s journey through grief, pick up the latest issue ofPEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.
If you or someone you know needs mental health help, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
source: people.com
