Brian Wilson has suffered an unimaginable loss.
The Beach Boys founder is in mourning after his wife of 28 years, Melinda Ledbetter Wilson, died on the morning of Jan. 30. She was 77.
“My heart is broken,” Wilson wrote on Instagram in the wake of her passing. “Melinda was more than my wife. She was my savior. She gave me the emotional security I needed to have a career. She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart.”
Calling Melinda his “anchor,” Brian—who shares kids Dakota, Daria, Delanie, Dylan and Dash with the former model—added that the family is “just in tears.”
“We are lost,” the 81-year-old wrote. ” She was everything for us.”
Brian also shared a separate statement from the couple’s children, who described Melinda as a “force of nature and one of the strongest women you could come by.”
“She was not only a model, our fathers savior, and a mother, she was a woman empowered by her spirit with a mission to better everyone she touched,” they said. “We will miss her but cherish everything she has taught us. How to take care of the person next to you without expecting anything in return, how to find beauty in the darkest of places, and how to live life as your truest self with honesty and pride.”
