Melissa Rivers Is Still Mourning the Death of Her Mom Joan Rivers

It doesn’t get any easier. It’s been three years since the death of comedienne Joan Rivers, and her daughter Melissa Rivers is making sure that her mother’s legacy is honored even after her passing. The TV personality stopped by the Today show on Tuesday, Oct. 24 to promote the release of her new book Joan Rivers Confidential, and she also opened up about how difficult it’s been for her to go on with her life without her mom.

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“There are some days that it feels like 10 years and some days where it feels like yesterday. But that’s the normal grieving process,” the 49-year-old told Today show hosts Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. “Everyone expects me to have this sort of elevated or heightened experience, and the truth is — and I say this all the time — grief is grief is grief. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the public eye or a private person, it goes at your own pace.”

But Melissa decided to channel her grief into a more productive avenue, so she dove into a project that would help preserve her mom’s memory. She spent time going through all of the keepsakes that Joan collected throughout her life and career and then she carefully chose monologues, rare photos, and letters from her famous pals and compiled them into a book — but Melissa admitted that the process of digging through her mom’s belongings was painful.

“Everyone keeps saying, ‘Was it cathartic?’ and I guess in hindsight, it was,” the mom-of-one revealed. “But going through all of that was difficult, I think what people forget is starting at the end of the ‘60s and the beginning of the ‘70s was my life too, so it was making decisions of what to show and what not to show and having to relive certain events I didn’t necessarily want to relive like the death of my father.”

Scroll through the gallery below to see Melissa and Joan’s sweetest mommy-daughter moments.