Tina Turner Says Loneliness Was a Big Factor in Her Son Craig's Suicide
Tina Turner is opening up about the tragic death of her eldest son Craig, who died by suicide last year.
Nearly a year after the tragedy, the 79-year-old rock music icon said that she thinks her son, who was 59 when he died, is in a “good place.”
“I think Craig was lonely, that’s what I think really got him more than anything else,” Turner told CBS News‘ Gayle King in an interview published Sunday. “I have pictures all around of him smiling, and I think I’m sensing that he’s in a good place. I really do.”
This isn’t the first time Turner has spoken about the loss of Craig, who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Studio City, California, last July, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner confirmed to PEOPLE at the time.
“I still don’t know what took him to the edge,” Turner told the BBC last October, saying that it was doubly confusing to her because he had recently started a new job and had found love. “At that stage he had said to me that he had never met a woman that he felt that way about.”
“He was bringing her to meet me [for] his birthday in August. He had decorated his apartment, that I bought him years ago. He had gotten a new job with a prominent real estate company in California, [which] he was very happy with,” she added to the outlet.
“I have no idea what pulled him down, except something that followed him with loneliness,” she continued, echoing her recent comments. “I think it was something with being alone. But when I think that, why didn’t he call the new girlfriend that gave him the lift?”
Turner described her son as “an introverted person” and “very shy.”
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“I didn’t know either, except now when I listen back to our last conversations, I notice a change. The last few times we talked, the conversations were different, and I didn’t know that until after the suicide,” she said.
After Craig’s death, Turner spread his ashes off the coast of California.
“My saddest moment as a mother,” the singer wrote in a Twitter tribute to her son. “On Thursday, July 19 2018, I said my final goodbye to my son, Craig Raymond Turner, when I gathered with family and friends to scatter his ashes off the coast of California. He was 59 when he died so tragically, but he will always be my baby.”
Turner reveals in her new memoir, titled “My Love Story,” that she has struggled with suicidal thoughts of her own during her life.
RELATED: Tina Turner Opens Up About Her Son’s Suicide: ‘I Still Don’t Know What Took Him to the Edge’
“At my lowest, I convinced myself that death was my only way out. I actually tried to kill myself,” she said, speaking of her relationship with abusive ex-husband Ike Turner. After taking dozens of sleeping pills and still waking up, Turner said that she “came out of the darkness believing I was meant to survive.”
And survived, she has.
In the interview with King, Turner said that now, she wants for nothing, and considers the troubles of her past behind her.
“I have everything,” she said. “When I sit at the Lake Zurich in the house that I have, I am so serene. No problems. I had a very hard life. But I didn’t put blame on anything or anyone. I got through it, I lived through it with no blame. And I’m a happy person.”
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “help” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
