“She’s still everything to me. I probably feel her more since she’s left the planet,” Kravitz, 59, tells PEOPLE inthis week’s cover storyabout his mother, who died of breast cancer in 1995 at the age of 66.
“I’m very fortunate that she was on television because when I need to, I’ll turn onThe Jeffersonsand watch her, and it does so much for me,” he says of finding comfort in viewing old episodes ofthe hit CBS sitcom, on which she played Helen Willis for 11 seasons.
“I am so grateful that God chose her to be my mother,” he tells himself now, having spent so many years without her. The longtime rocker adds that even now, he “still feel[s] her just as much — she’s just not here physically,” he says, explaining that “spiritually, I feel her deeply.”
Roxie Roker and Lenny Kravitz in Los Angeles in 1993.Vinnie Zuffante/getty
Kravitz, who says that Roker was “everything to me,” notes that his mother “Was the most exceptional human being I’ve ever experienced. She was so nonjudgmental.”
Roker first married Kravitz’s father, Sly, in 1962 before giving birth to the now-legendary musician on May 26, 1964.
Lenny Kravitz on the cover of PEOPLE.Melodie McDaniel
Melodie McDaniel
While Kravitz had a turbulent relationship with his father — something he detailed in his 2020 memoirLet Love Rule— his relationship with his mother never faltered. (His father is also gone, dying in 2005 at 80 years old.)
A self-proclaimed “mama’s boy,” Kravitz opened up about his close dynamic with his mother,writing in his memoirthat “Mom was and is my heart.” He added, “Roxie Roker was a gifted actress, mother and empath who understood how to combine all three roles.”
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Lenny Kravitz and his father Sy Kravitz ; Lenny Kravitz with mother Roxie Roker.Frank Micelotta/Getty ; Vinnie Zuffante/Getty
“She was a woman who never spoke badly about anybody, even if they deserved it,” he shared in his memoir, recalling a telling moment that happened after she died.
“At her funeral, late actor Brock Peters said, ‘If Roxie met the devil himself, she’d say to him, ‘What a lovely red suit.’ The whole place burst out laughing because that was my mother. She’s going to find the positive thing that she can say or do in any situation,” the musician shared.
Lenny Kravitz for PEOPLE.Melodie McDaniel
For more on Lenny Kravitz’s life and loves, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, available on newsstands everywhere now.
source: people.com
