Nile Rodgers Unable To Bury His Late Mom Due To COVID Crisis: ‘She’s In A Refrigerator Truck!’

Yahoo.com, By Tomas Mier-PEOPLE, Posted February 21st 2021

Nile Rodgers hasn’t been able to bury his mother nearly a month after her death.

Speaking to Andy Coulson for Crisis What Crisis podcast, the guitarist opened up about the death of his mother Beverly Goodman due to Alzheimer’s disease and how he hasn’t been able to properly grieve her death due to COVID.

“Today is the 26th and I haven’t been able to make any funeral plans. She’s in the back of a refrigerator truck. Talk about crisis,” he said about his mother, who died on Dec. 27 at age 82.

“It’s horrible, breaking our hearts,” the 68-year-old said. “When you go there and you see something that’s so graphic like that, it really reminds you of images of people thrown into mass graves.”

Following her death, Rodgers shared a heartbreaking post of himself by her bedside.

“My mom #BeverlyGoodman#RIP passed away around 6am today,” he wrote on Instagram. “I breathed some of my 1st breaths with her and she breathed some of her last with me. My brothers and I will contact everyone soon. Today I’m numb.”

Days later, he posted a photo of himself when she was just 14. “I sang to my mom #RIP for three days before she #passedaway. I #mourn everyone who’s lost someone dear. My heart is #broken,” he wrote in another post.

On the podcast, Rodgers shared some of his upbringing and memories of his mother and how they lived “alternative lifestyles,” even if addiction took a toll on his family.

“My parents were super, super intellectual, very kind people and because of their love, I was able to get through their extreme self-centeredness because of their drug addiction,” he explained. “When you’re a heroin addict, you can’t help but be self-centered. But they were very loving. They were victims of their addiction.”

Last year, the musician spoke to the BBC about how his family is prone to Alzheimer’s disease and how his mother started to sing following her diagnosis. (Five of his family members have had it.)

“I’ve never really heard my mother sing aloud in my life until she developed Alzheimer’s,” Rodgers told BBC. “She’s developed perfect pitch, which is incredible. When my mom and I go walking down the street, she’s all of a sudden got a real singer’s voice, and she’s hitting the notes perfectly.”