Melissa Rivers Says a Crisis After Father’s Suicide Helped Her and Joan Heal (Exclusive)

Melissa Rivers is opening up about the trauma she and her mom, the late comedian Joan Rivers, faced when Melissa’s dad, Edgar Rosenberg, died of suicide in 1987 by overdosing on prescription pills in a Philadelphia hotel room.

At the time, Joan said that her husband of 22 years had been clinically depressed, believing it was brought on by medication he had been taking after having a heart attack in 1984.

Now, in a conversation with PEOPLE, Melissa says the family faced unspeakable grief afterward — and her relationship with her mom was torn apart. “Suicide is very complicated for the people who survive it,” Melissa, 56, explains. “It was very painful. It was very hard.”

In a 1993 cover story for PEOPLE, 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 soon after the couple had separated. “We tried to go on with our own lives, but we were both so broken that we couldn’t help each other.”

Melissa says they eventually realized they needed one another.

“It took therapy. It took time,” she now says of how they repaired their relationship. “I went into a full crisis situation where I ended up in an abusive relationship, and when I called her for help, she came through. It took another major crisis for us to heal from the other crisis.”

Melissa adds that once they were on speaking terms again, they channeled their sorrow into bringing the subject of suicide into the light.

“We really threw ourselves into lending our name to suicide prevention,” Melissa says. “At the time, suicide was still not something that was discussed. We’re talking 1987 when people thought it was still shameful or thought that it ran in families. Nobody would know what to say to you.”

“I spent a good amount of my time working to de-stigmatizing it,” she continues. “I’m the co-chair of the Didi Hirsch Health Mental Services and Suicide Prevention. And I am always available for people when they go through it. I’m really honest about it: It sucks.”

Melissa says she prefers not to sugarcoat suicide for anyone.

“Whenever somebody loses someone, whether it be suicide or any other kind of reason, I call my friends, and I go, here’s the honest part, it sucks. There’s nothing good about this right now. It’s going to suck for a while, and you’re going to get through it.”

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She says that nearly immediately after losing her dad, her mom Joan decided to leave Los Angeles, where Melissa was raised, and move to New York City.

“My parents always felt like fish out of water in L.A., and it really became acute for my mother after my dad died,” she says of Joan, who later died in 2014 at age 81.

“It just wasn’t who they were. It wasn’t who she was. And apparently, my parents had this pact that when one of them died, the other one would go back to New York,” Melissa recalls. “I have no idea why they had this pact, but I think it’s because neither of them liked living in L.A.”

She adds, “They were the least cool hip Hollywood people. My mom used to joke that we’re lucky that my father did not sleep in a tie and their friends were really out of the English movie community. They were not hanging in Malibu with a gold chain, an open shirt and bell bottoms.”

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, texting “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741, or go to 988lifeline.org.