Matthew Perry’s mother is remembering him not only for the son she lost, but for the purpose he hoped would outlive him.

On Aug. 19, what would have been the Friends star’s 57th birthday, Suzanne Morrison shared a deeply personal tribute reflecting on the joy, pain and addiction struggles that shaped her son’s life — and on something he repeatedly said near the end of it.

Perry wanted to help people who were fighting the same disease he had spent years battling.

That wish has become an important part of the legacy his family is now trying to carry forward.

The Matthew Perry House, a Canada-based nonprofit created in his memory, shared Morrison’s birthday message alongside an old family photograph showing her feeding Perry when he was a baby.

For Morrison, the date remained painfully vivid.

She wrote that Aug. 19 still brought her back to the day her son was born 57 years earlier, while also stirring memories of the years in which he struggled and sometimes concealed his addiction from both the public and the people closest to him.

Her description of Perry captured the complicated mixture of qualities a mother remembers after losing a child: he could be sweet, loving and funny, but also stubborn and difficult.

Above all, she remembered how badly he wanted to get better.

“I miss him terribly,” Morrison wrote, adding that the feeling remains with her every day.

But her tribute was not focused only on grief.

Morrison also recalled hearing Perry repeatedly express a desire during the final days of his life to help other people who felt trapped by addiction.

He can no longer do that work himself, she acknowledged. His family, friends and supporters, however, can continue it in his name.

That message carries particular weight because addiction was not a distant subject in Perry’s public life. It was one of the defining personal battles of his adulthood, and later became something he openly hoped his own experiences could help others understand.

Perry died suddenly on Oct. 28, 2023, at age 54 from an accidental ketamine overdose.

In the immediate aftermath of his death, his family described themselves as heartbroken over losing their son and brother. They also emphasized the happiness Perry had brought to others through both his acting career and his personal relationships.

For millions of television viewers, Perry will always be closely associated with Chandler Bing, the quick-witted character he played on Friends. But for Morrison, the public image of a beloved sitcom star existed alongside something far more intimate: a son whose private struggles she desperately wished she could fix.

That pain has surfaced repeatedly in the years since his death.

Ahead of the May 2026 sentencing of Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry’s personal assistant who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine in connection with the actor’s death, Morrison wrote a victim impact statement describing Perry as her “heart and my soul.”

She wrote about the particular devastation of a mother losing a child and said she did not believe the pain would ever fully disappear.

Her grief has also revealed itself in smaller, everyday moments.

During an October 2024 interview with Savannah Guthrie on Today, Morrison described the instinct she still had to reach for the phone whenever something amusing happened.

If she encountered a ridiculous story or saw something she knew Perry would find funny, she would momentarily think about calling him.

Then reality would return.

The person she wanted to share the joke with was no longer there.

Morrison said the realization could hit her with tremendous force.

That interview also exposed another painful part of her experience as Perry’s mother: guilt.

She spoke openly about feeling unable to overcome the addiction that affected her son, remembering him as someone who carried a profound loneliness within himself.

Despite the many fortunate parts of her own life, Morrison said there was one problem she could never solve.

She could not save him from that struggle.

It is that sense of helplessness that makes the work being done in Perry’s name especially meaningful to his family.

Following his death, Morrison, other family members and Perry’s friends helped establish Matthew Perry House in Canada. The organization is dedicated to honoring his memory by supporting people dealing with addiction and helping them through recovery.

Perry’s sister Caitlin Morrison serves as the organization’s executive director.

A separate U.S.-based organization, the Matthew Perry Foundation, is also devoted to supporting people struggling with addiction.

Together, those efforts reflect the idea at the center of Morrison’s birthday tribute: Perry’s own battle ended tragically, but his desire to help others does not have to end with him.

The old photograph chosen for the Aug. 19 message adds another emotional layer to that idea.

Long before the television fame, the public struggles and the loss that would eventually make headlines around the world, Perry was simply a baby in his mother’s arms.

More than five decades later, Morrison is left carrying memories from every version of her son — the child she raised, the actor audiences loved, the man who struggled, and the person who still hoped his experiences might become useful to someone else.

Her birthday tribute does not pretend that grief has become easier with time.

She still misses him constantly.

But nearly three years after Perry’s death, his family is attempting to transform part of that grief into action.

The goal is closely tied to what Morrison remembers him saying near the end of his life: that he wanted to reach people who were living through the same struggle he knew so well.

Perry cannot personally fulfill that hope anymore.

His family believes they can help carry it forward for him.