Marie Osmond, the only girl among the eight brothers, joined the group Osmond Brothers when she was just four. She, however, wasn’t a regular during the group’s television performances through the 1960s. At the age of 12, Marie started her solo career and had her first recording session which she later described as terrifying. “It was a full orchestra and rhythm section. I was the only Osmond girl, what if I failed?” she told Daily Mail in 2015. “So I threw up! Then I went in and sang.”
Marie, just like her mom, had many children. She was married three times, twice to the same husband, basketball player Steve Lyle Craig. The two had one child, son Stephen Jr. With second husband Brian Blosil, Marie had two biological and five adopted children, making her a mom of eight.
She and Brian lost son Michael to suicide in 2010. Her fans were surprised to see her getting back on stage just weeks after the tragic incident.
Speaking to Fox in 2013, she said, “It was so hard for me to get back on the stage two weeks after he died but I had to show my children that I chose to live. It was very hard and we talk about it, that’s the other thing. I know there are other families that won’t talk about it. Just as much as I lost a son, my children lost a brother and they still need to process it.”
Marie recalled the moment she learned of her son’s passing. She had just finished a performance at the Flamingo Las Vegas when she got a call from her security guard back home. He told her that some people from the Coroner’s office were there to see her.
“I knew it was Mike,” Marie told Oprah later in an interview.
Michael was one of the five children Marie and Brian adopted when they were still together.
Brian died by jumping from his eight-floor apartment. He struggled with drug addiction from the age of 12 but managed to stay away from it with the help of his family. In the note he wrote before taking his own life, he explained that he battled depression for some time.
“[He] was probably the easiest child of all my kids. He was so fun. And cute. And darling. It wasn’t until my son started using drugs that I saw him change.”
She recalled that he called her the day he died and sounded upset.
“It was the first time I heard him start to cry and say he was alone. That he had no friends. That he felt despair,” Marie revealed. “I told him: ‘Mike, I’m going to be there Monday, and it’s going to be okay.’ But depression doesn’t wait till Monday.”
Marie went on to speak of her own struggles with depression and said she managed to overcome it thanks to her age but “children don’t have that kind of age behind them… When they’re 18, everything [seems] hopeless.”
“I think there’s always ‘what ifs.’ What if I had just put him on a plane and said come be with me, or gone there?” I think if you live life in ‘what ifs’ … you stop living,” Marie said.
We are so sorry for Marie Osmond’s loss.
No matter how much time passes by, the grief over the loss of a child never fades away.
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