Ashley Judd recalls holding mother Naomi as she died, asks for privacy

nypost.com:

discovering her mother Naomi after her suicide in April.Judd, 54, described “the most shattering day of [her] life” in a personal essay in the New York Times, recalling finding her mother still alive and holding her.“The trauma of discovering and then holding her laboring body haunts my nights,” Judd wrote.While all Judd wanted to do was comfort her mom, law enforcement officers began interviewing her and kept her away from Naomi during the last moments of her life, leaving her feeling “cornered and powerless.”“I wanted to be comforting her, telling her how she was about to see her daddy and younger brother as she ‘went away home,’ as we say in Appalachia,” Judd said. “Instead, without it being indicated I had any choices about when, where and how to participate, I began a series of interviews that felt mandatory and imposed on me that drew me away from the precious end of my mother’s life.”Judd felt as though the officers were making her out to be a “possible suspect” just moments after she found her mother’s body.“The men who were present left us feeling stripped of any sensitive boundary, interrogated and, in my case, as if I was a possible suspect in my mother’s suicide,” she recalled.Naomi died by suicide at 76 years old from a self-inflicted gun wound on April 30 after years of struggling with mental illness.In the months since Naomi’s passing, many details of her death have been released to the public, including videos, images and family interviews, and Judd is now fighting to get her family privacy. “I don’t know that we’ll be able to get the privacy we deserve…I do know that we’re not alone,” Judd said in her essay.