Marie Osmond Opens Up About Son Michael's Suicide: 'I Don't Think You're Ever Through' the Pain
Marie Osmond is opening up about the aftermath of her son Michael‘s death nearly 10 years ago. He was 18.
The Donny & Marie star, 59, acknowledged that while she has moments in which she feels healed from Michael’s 2010 suicide, they are fleeting.
“You know, I don’t think you’re ever through it,” she told CBS Sunday Morning. “I think God gives you respites, and then all of a sudden it’ll hit you like the day it did. The ripple effect is so huge, what you leave behind.”
Michael, one of Osmond’s eight children and one of five she adopted with second husband Brian Blosil, died by suicide in February 2010 when he jumped from the eighth-floor balcony of his downtown Los Angeles apartment.
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“My family and I are devastated and in deep shock by the tragic loss of our dear Michael and ask that everyone respect our privacy during this difficult time,” she said in a statement at the time.
Michael had previously entered a rehab facility in 2007 for undisclosed reasons, but by 2009, Osmond told PEOPLE he was thriving, and was earning good grades in his final year of high school.
“My son Michael is an amazing young man, shown through his courage in facing his issues,” Osmond said in 2007.
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The singer opened up about the circumstances surrounding his death in November 2010, and revealed Michael was battling depression.
“When I heard him say to me, I have no friends, it brought back when I went through depression, because you really feel so alone,” she told Oprah Winfrey. “I’m not a depressed person, but I understand that place, that darkness … I told him, I said, ‘Mike, I’m gonna be there Monday and it’s gonna be OK.’ But depression doesn’t wait ‘til Monday.”
She later called his death “probably the hardest thing I’ve been through,” and questioned the many “What ifs?”
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“What if I had just put him on a plane and said, ‘Come be with me,’ or gone there?” she said. “I think if you live in ‘what ifs’ … you stop living.”
Osmond again addressed the tragedy in her 2013 book The Key Is Love, telling PEOPLE that part of her healing process was talking about her emotions.
“You cry until you can’t cry, and then you cry some more,” she wrote, adding that the moment she learned he’d died felt like “someone had run a knife into my heart.”
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “home” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
