Billie Lourd has paid emotional tribute to her late mother Carrie Fisher, writing that she was “too young to die.”
The Star Wars actor, who would have turned 68 today, died in 2016 at the age of 60.
On Instagram, Lourd, 32, wrote: “My mom would’ve been 68 today. Dead person birthdays are weird to say the least.
“On my mom’s birthday every year, I try to celebrate her as much as possible, but today I really wanted to celebrate her with her. Some years my grief makes me feel the warmth of her love, some years it makes me angry, some years I feel numb but today when I woke up I just felt sad.”
Lourd, who has a role in the upcoming Pamela Anderson movie The Last Showgirl, went on to say that her grief inspired her to search out statistics related to premature death.
“I didn’t want to celebrate, I just wanted my mom,” she wrote. “My sadness bodysnatched me so I googled ‘average death age woman’ (ooohhh what a fun google billie!!! I promise the rest of my google search history has a sliightly more fun vibe?!) and google said it was 80.2. My mom died when she was 60. 60 is too damn young to die.
“I then googled drug overdose deaths (another fun morning google!!!) and it is over 100 thousand people per year. I did everything in my power to help my mom get sober but sadly my mom couldn’t ever escape her addiction. But while she was alive she always shared the ups and downs of that struggle with others in hopes it would help them escape their own addiction.
“As an addict, being open about the struggle is the only way through. And same goes for those of us affected by that struggle. Sending my love to anyone out there who has lost someone to drug addiction. You are not alone.”
Earlier this year, singer James Blunt revealed in his memoir that Lourd partly “blames” him for her mother’s death.
“Charlie, her best friend, confronted her more directly and told her she needed to quit drugs,” he wrote. “I took a different approach and did them with her, pretending to myself that I would guide her to redemption one day – just not today. As a result, her daughter Billie blames me in part for her death, and no longer speaks to me.”
Blunt and Fisher met through mutual friends in the Noughties and struck up an unlikely bond. He ended up moving into her Los Angeles home – where she and her mother, the actor and singer Debbie Reynolds, also lived – and he recorded his first album, 2004’s Back to Bedlam, while staying there.
Blunt has previously revealed he was with the Princess Leia actor the night before she was found unresponsive on a flight from London to Los Angeles. She died days later, and a toxicology report found she had cocaine, heroin, MDMA and methadone in her system.
