"It wasn't my children's fault or the band's fault. It wasn't anyone's fault."
Chester Bennington's widow, Talinda, recently spoke about the musician's death and struggle with depression, as well as the impact of suicide.
“My husband had a past… He had tried to kill himself before, but I thought to myself, ‘He was drunk, he was this or that.’ So before he passed away, I was naive and thought we were okay ,” she reveals.
“We had a very dear friend, Chris Cornell, and he killed himself. And I felt this, 'Okay, Chester is seeing Vicky and her children going through this' – We are godparents to the children – 'This will never happen to me.'”
Talinda also spoke about the last days they spent together, revealing that he was excited to go on tour and promote the new album, One More Light, “ then he gave me a kiss and one to the children and left. And I never saw him again.”
In recounting that Chester had been sober for almost six months, Talinda recalls that two bottles of beer were found in his room when he passed away, “I knew he had relapsed, but I also knew he wasn’t drunk. I immediately knew that his relapse brought shame, and that shame brought a life full of unhealthy thoughts.”
After her husband's death, she has spoken openly about depression and suicide, seeking to help people who suffer from this illness. "The internet has helped me, but I also see malicious comments saying that the suicide was my fault. But I need to remember that it wasn't. And it wasn't my children's fault or the band's fault. It wasn't anyone's fault."
“It’s not about blame. It was years of missed treatments that led to substance abuse, which led to bad relationships. When I met him, he was ready to be healthy ,” she adds.
Chester Bennington, frontman of Linkin Park, passed away in July 2017. Similarly, Chris Cornell passed away a month earlier.