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Melissa Rivers and son Cooper, 14, cover the June/July issue of AARP. The reality star, 47, opens up about coping with the loss of her beloved mother, legendary comedienne Joan Rivers, and the tough decision to let her go.

On where she is in the grieving process: “I’m still in that deification phase. You miss even the sh-ttiest things: I miss when she’d come in and rearrange my furniture and tell me how I ran my house wrong and criticize everything. I miss the criticism! I’m still in that phase.”

On the working relationship she had with her mother: “My mother and I each had our own lanes. She’d work on one thing, I’d work on another, and then we’d come up with the game plan. Suddenly it feels like the work hasn’t doubled; it’s tripled. There’s a new entity: the estate and the legacy. And there’s no map. I don’t want to blow it, so there’s a lot of pressure.”

On dealing with the loss of both her mother and creative partner: “I was part of a comedy team. I was the straight man. And now I’m a solo act. That’s the hard part. I’m trying to find my voice.”

On making the decision to let her mother go: “She had a living will and an advance directive that was very specific. My mother’s definition of quality of life was having all her faculties and being able to go on stage for one hour and, here was the kicker, be funny. As hard as it was, I knew the right decision.”

On her thoughts on moving forward in life without her parents: “When one parent dies, it’s a comma. When the second parent dies, it’s a period.”

For more from Melissa, go to AARP…