Jeff Buckley’s Ex Opens Up About the Rock Icon’s Final Days Before His Death at 30 (Exclusive)

It took nearly three decades for Rebecca Moore to feel ready to talk publicly about Jeff Buckley.

“Sorrow causes a lot of people, including myself, to kind of run and hide,” Moore tells PEOPLE of the years after her former partner died.

Moore is one of several people close to the ’90s rock icon featured in Amy Berg’s new documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (in theaters now), which takes an intimate look at the “Hallelujah” singer’s life and tragic death in 1997 at the age of 30.

Moore says Berg, whose previous work includes Deliver Us From Evil, about sex abuse in the Catholic church, as well as a Janis Joplin documentary, was a major factor in persuading her to open up.

“Amy has a body of work that made me respect her, and it seemed like an honor,” explains Moore, who says for years she kept silent because of grief — and the harsh public judgment often cast on an “ex”: “There were all these little gates I put up, but I thought, ‘How long are you going to keep everything to yourself?’ This person was so magical. I wanted to celebrate what was beautiful about this relationship, even though there was so much pain, and to have pride in whatever part I played.”

Moore and Buckley met in New York in 1991 when Buckley was still an unknown singer-songwriter from L.A. who had come to town to perform at a tribute concert for his father, Tim Buckley, a folk singer who died at 28 — and whom Buckley never knew.

Moore was a performance artist working backstage. Their love affair inspired songs on Buckley’s 1994 debut, Grace, an album that’s influenced the likes of Adele, Coldplay and Lana Del Rey.

“It was a revelation of a relationship, because I don’t think we each before that had felt understood by anyone,” says Moore, now 57. “It opened up a world of love and possibility for both of us. New York seemed suddenly magical and my apartment felt like a tree house in the sky.”

Their romantic relationship crumbled under the pressures of fame and touring after Buckley signed a multi-million dollar deal with Columbia Records, and Moore says she worried about Buckley after they broke up: “I hoped he had good people around him because he didn’t always know how to stay safe or protect himself,” she says. “He was very open-spirited without strong boundaries. He would try to love everyone, be loved, give as much as he can, he made everyone he talked to feel like you were the most important person in the world.”

The two remained close until the end, continuing to meet occasionally and talk on the phone.

Their final phone call occurred days before his death in May 1997. Buckley had moved to Memphis, Tenn., in hopes of finding inspiration for his much-anticipated second album. When he called Moore, who was still in New York, she says Buckley was feeling intense pressure from his label to deliver — and he was also showing signs of mental distress.

“We had a last conversation where I was very concerned about him,” Moore says. “It was like the most beautiful conversation we ever had in our seven years of knowing each other, but it was also the most disturbing. It had two parts to it.”

At first, she says Buckley sounded upbeat and optimistic, sharing with her that he was “discovering a path to take care of himself and more healing,” she says, adding that he told her thought he might be bipolar. “He mentioned bipolar, … and he said, ‘And I’m stopping eating animals.'” That was particularly meaningful to Moore, then a vegan, who now devotes her time running an animal rescue organization in New York called the Institute for Animal Happiness.

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Buckley told her he had been going to the zoo and sitting with animals, and was interested in getting a job there. “He loved animals,” she says. “He would throw himself over the counter at a bodega to hug a cute cat. Or if somebody was walking a cute dog down the sidewalk, the next thing I knew, he was rolling on the cement dirty sidewalk with this dog.”

To Moore it all sounded like he was looking for ways to be healthier, but then the conversation turned darker. “It was definitely some sort of mental health struggle,” she says. “And like many people, he was in and out of managing it. I sensed he was sort of bottoming out with a kind of grief, you know. He was grief-stricken for the second half of the conversation.”

Miles away from him, she wasn’t sure how to help, so she asked a mutual friend, one of Buckley’s bandmates, who was heading to Memphis to record songs for the second album, to take him a package of personal photographs and mementos of Jeff’s that she thought could bring him comfort.

“I don’t think the stuff in this envelope, the mementos would’ve changed anything, but it was all I could think to do in that moment,” she says. “That’s the torture of this. It’s not just that someone you love died, but they died opening a can of worms at the last moment.”

But the day he was to start recording in May 1997, before he met with his band, Buckley stopped off at a tributary adjacent to the Mississippi and, singing along as Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” played on a nearby stereo, waded into the water, sober and fully clothed. A wake from a passing riverboat pulled him under. Authorities found his body six days later, and an autopsy later determined he had one beer and no drugs in his system. His death was ruled accidental.

Moore says she believes that Buckley had no intention of dying that day: “It was a moment of joy that was a 100 percent patented Jeff-type move,” Moore says. “I believe his death was an accident with him just swimming out in a moment of joy, killing time. It was a terrible accident. But I do think in the days leading up to it, he was struggling. And what I have to weigh is, is something really an accident if someone was showing psychological distress?”

It’s difficult not to think about what might have been, she says: “I’m left going, ‘What else could I have done? Could I have called his mom?’ I hadn’t spoken to his mom in like four or five years, but I feel sad because I feel like his mom and me are people that might’ve…”

Her voice trails off. “I can’t be angry at other people for not doing that. I can’t hold regrets about it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t know what they saw… it’s easy for me to go, ‘I would’ve thrown a coat over him and brought him to a hospital,’ but that maybe wasn’t an option.”

Moore says she tries to focus on the gifts that Buckley left behind — his music, but also the memory of him who he was as a person.

“Other people cry about the artist loss. And I do think his art was a gift to the world,” she says. “But for me, it was like the gift of him … He was just a very sweet, alive, caring person. And caring too much about everything. The takeaway from me about Jeff is I hope we learn how precious we each are and take better, kinder care of each other.”