So many of his lyrics were very sad, and so many of his songs were about dying. How did you feel listening to those?

I remember hearing “Let Me Bleed,” and just thinking, “Ugh.” But when he was sad, that was how he felt, and he was extremely passionate. He had a lot of sorrow that he had kept to himself about things that I only found out about much later. Very painful experiences that I’d never known. It wasn’t anything physical, but there was some real emotional, psychological sadness that he had that I didn’t know about until he told me later. Or he tried to tell me one time, but I didn’t get it. During his whole senior year, people who’d been his friend stopped being his friend. He was low, and he felt like shit. He had black curtains in his room, he was in bed most of the time, and it was messy, ashes everywhere. But he didn’t care about cleaning up, so I’d go in and clean when he’d let me in there. But I didn’t want to go in there much.

I think there was sadness too when he went to California. He was alone and scared to death. He was 17. He couldn’t even sign the lease because he was too young.

How did he end up settling into himself over time?

He was getting positive feedback. He was so surprised and excited that people liked his music. He’d come and show me all his followers, how many listens and likes and views and whatever they were. I bought records off of Bandcamp to show support, and followed him and all that stuff. In 2015, he was getting a lot of views on SoundCloud, and writing and writing and writing and writing.

What was his sudden fame like for him, and for you?

He was still just Gus. What was different about it was that he was constantly busy. I’m sure he was experimenting with drugs then. I know he was. I would keep track of him, watching him on Periscope. And sometimes I would say, “Hi honey, Mama loves you,” and he’d be like, “Mama, don’t watch this now. I’m going off.” I was watching him just to make sure he was safe, that he was OK. But when I saw him in Denver, I said “What is that pink stuff?” And he said, “Mama, that’s lean.” “What is lean?” And he told me. I said, “Well, don’t do that. That’s dumb. Why are you doing that stupid stuff?” The pot—pot is medicine as far as I’m concerned.

Did you know he was using pills around the time he died?

Well, Gus took Xanax. Not that often, but he would. He took it to really just be relaxed socially, and then I think also probably for performing.

Once you start touring and becoming famous, people are going to give you drugs.

Yeah, they’ll try. On one of the first tours, he was in England, and they have ketamine there. My mother said she had seen some post and was worried about that, and she contacted him about it. But he didn’t do opioids actually. He didn’t do those. He had friends who started doing them and then he stopped hanging out with those friends because he didn’t do those.

At one point, I think I wrote to him, “No bad drugs, Gussy.” I’d always say, “Just make sure to try to sleep, try to eat some healthy food, drink water.” Then I saw coke too, because there’s a post of lines of coke on a picture my mother had given him of Karl Marx. God. I also think, in a way, he was sort of like, “This is what I’m having to do.” These were sort of… cries of help, actually.

You think that’s how he was getting through?

Yeah. Everybody was worried about him, because that wasn’t Gus. His face was all kind of swollen. He had the hat and the sunglasses on all the time. That was not happy Gus. That was exhausted, “look what I’m having to do to get through this” Gus. So I started sending him pictures of Taz and pictures of this house, because we were just moving in. Pictures of animals, because he loved animals. I was trying to give him the light at the end of the tunnel, because if you get too preachy, if you’re saying, “Gus, stop that,” he’s just going to say “fuck you” and kind of block you. So it was worrisome. But he’d been on a tour before and he’d been very well taken care of. I had faith.

You’re playing a big part in the release of his latest album, Come Over When You’re Sober Pt. 2. How does it feel now that so much of your life is having to talk about Gus? Is it nice?

It is, yeah. And, I mean, I’ve read a bunch of books. There’s a very good book called When Your Child Dies. I sent it to Cleo Bernard, the mother of Triple X. It was interesting to talk to her, because she said, “How do you do it?” because her son had died in June. But she also knows the music industry longer and better than I do. So we have things we can tell each other about. It actually does help to talk.

It’s got to be hard to be a parent and the shepherd of that legacy simultaneously.

Yeah, it is hard. Because I’ll have to watch another cut of the documentary and I know I’m going to cry and not sleep well, but I’m committed to it. But yeah, it hurts. I mean, it hurts. He was a very good person and he just didn’t deserve it. He did not deserve to die. We all miss him. I’m not a parent who wants their kids near them because I miss them. If my kid is happy, I’m happy. If he’s on fucking Mars and he’s happy, I’m happy. And that was kind of how I felt.

He had worked so hard and worked all those feelings out, and had felt all those sad feelings. And then he was really happy and he didn’t want to go on that tour. We were all like, “What?!” and he was like, “I know.” I just wanted him to just… he could have, you know, he was happy. He deserved to now be happy. He didn’t deserve that.