Sharon Osbourne has shed light on Ozzy Osbourne’s final weeks as she reflects on her husband’s life and legacy a year after his death.
The couple were married for 43 years, and Sharon was the Black Sabbath frontman’s manager until his death on July 22 last year aged 76 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Sharon Osbourne has shed some light on Ozzy Osbourne’s final months as he battled Parkinson’s disease. Getty
Sharon said doctors advised Ozzy not to have it Back to top a farewell concert at Villa Park in Birmingham just weeks before his death, but he didn’t listen.
“Ozzy knew he was dying,” she said Metal Forging Podcast host Ed James and a live audience at a local pub.
“Two weeks before the show they told him he was dying and they said, ‘Don’t do the show.’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s right. Get out of here.”
The widow called it a “gift” for her husband to be able to perform at the concert and witness the love of fans, rather than become some kind of memorial show after his death.
“His greatest love was for the public, and that’s how he wanted to come out,” Sharon said.
“One more time and he had to do it—and he smashed it.”
Sharon reveals that Ozzy was told by doctors not to play his “Back to the Beginning” farewell concert at Villa Park in Birmingham just weeks before his death, but he didn’t listen. Instagram/@blacksabbath
Sharon says the concert left Ozzy on an absolute high for the last two weeks after he was “so depressed, so depressed because he knew it was the end.”
“(It) was the happiest I’ve ever seen him,” she said, adding, “It was so great to see him smile every day.”
Sharon returned to Birmingham to mark the city’s first Ozzy Day on Tuesday, the first anniversary of his death.
The widow fought back tears as she talked about her husband and his love for the city that created him.
“I can’t forget what Birmingham did for Ozzy, that’s who my husband is, is and always will be,” she said.
“He wasn’t one of those guys who got rich and famous and started talking like he went to Oxford.”
Sharon then gave an example of how down to earth he could be, leaving King Charles “laughing hysterically” after expletive-filled comments at a state dinner at Windsor Castle.
“He talked to him like he was one of the guys in the factory, that’s what’s so great about him,” she said with a laugh, adding that she actually tried to kick her husband under the table.
Ozzy and Sharon’s youngest daughter, Kelly Osbourne, took to social media to reflect on the loss of her father and the “endless pain” of grief over the past 12 months.
“I’m not just mourning the father I lost. I’m mourning the soul I was before death taught my heart its own name,” she wrote in a text post against a black background.
Ozzy and Sharon’s youngest daughter Kelly Osbourne took to social media to reflect on the loss of her father and the “endless pain” of grief (pictured together in 2020) WireImage
“There is a grief that steals more than the person you love. It steals the light from your laughter, the innocence from your hope, and the stranger you become is the one you spend your whole life trying to know.”
“People think grief is missing someone who is gone, but the deepest grief is waking up every day longing for the version of themselves that died with them. Grief is a language that no one really speaks until life forces it upon them.”
“It is impossible to explain, borrow or imagine. You understand this endless pain only when you stand in unbearable silence, carrying with you a love that has nowhere to go.”
Kelly, who got engaged to her partner Sid Wilson backstage at her father’s last show, added that her life is now split into two parts – life before and after her father’s death.
“I miss who I was before my dad died,” the 41-year-old wrote.
“Before my heart became a home for separation. Before every memory became both a blessing and a wound. Some losses don’t just break you. They divide your life into two people. The one you used to be and the one you left behind.”
“And perhaps this is the cruelest truth of grief. It is not that death takes those we love, but that it leaves us as ghosts of the people we used to be.”
Kelly’s younger brother Jack Osbourne, 40, also wrote on social media that the month leading up to the anniversary had been a “mixed bag of emotions.”
It looks like he shared all the tributes to his father’s death, as well as a lot of Ozzy Day posters.
Their older sister Aimee Osborne, 42, has mostly stayed out of the spotlight and off social media.