Her son had been struggling with depression for a long time. He was just 18 years old when he took his own life.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on February 19, 2021. It has since been updated.
Country music artist and talk show host Marie Osmond was resting in her hotel room on February 26, 2010, after performing at the Flamingo Las Vegas when she woke up to the call of her security guard stationed at her home. He told her some people were there to see her from the coroner's office. "I knew it was Mike," Osmond told Oprah, referring to her son Michael Blosil, the fourth-oldest child of her eight kids.
Blosil plunged to his death from the eighth floor of his apartment. He was a student at The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. The young man was just 18 years old when he made the shocking decision of taking his own life. He also left a note suggesting he had intended to commit suicide as he had been struggling with depression for a long time.
Remembering her beloved son, Osmond said, "[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." By the age of 12, Blosil was abusing drugs following which he was in and out of rehab a lot. However, in 2009, the singer revealed that her son was finally clean. According to the toxicology report as well, Blosil was not under the influence of any drugs when he jumped to his death.
Osmond revealed that even though her son had been doing well, telling her that he had "never been happier" in his life the last time they met, the day before his death Blosil had called her sounding distressed. "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," revealed Osmond. "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."
As someone who's struggled with post-partum depression herself, Osmond said that she understood what her son must be going through when he wrote the letter and then took the plunge. "He had made that decision, I guess. He loved his family, but ... the pain was too intense," she said. She noted that her age stopped her from any suicidal impulses but "children don't have that kind of age behind them... When they're 18, everything [seems] hopeless."
Talking to the late talk show host Larry King in the same year, Osmond revealed that along with depression Blosil was "dealing with a lot. He's one of my kids. He's dealing with adoption issues, all kinds of things right now." Returning to her Las Vegas show with her brother, Donny Osmond, just two weeks after her son's death, the emotional singer told the audience that the stage was her "safe place," reported ABC News.
Talking about how the death of someone close usually scares people, Blosil said, "It doesn't scare me, like I guess it scares some people. And I knew that if I didn't get back on stage, that I may never get back on stage. I've been through some tough things in my life. This is probably the hardest thing I've been through."
On the day of Blosil's funeral, his siblings shared their favorite memories with their brother. Osmond herself took the responsibility of preparing her son's body along with her daughters. "I wanted Mike to look like my Mike...and he did. He looked very handsome," she told Oprah.
She told her daughters that the body is "just a glove over the hand—our spirit, our soul is the hand." Even though the whole experience was hard for her and her daughters, Osmond said that it was healing as well. "It's a beautiful thing. If you've never experienced it or you think you can't, it's a wonderful act of service."
The Talk host addressed the tragedy in her 2013 book, The Key Is Love, telling People that she still has moments where she drops to her knees unable to breathe. “You cry until you can’t cry, and then you cry some more.” She wrote in her book that the moment she was informed about Blosil's death, it felt like “someone had run a knife into my heart.”
References:
https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/marie-osmonds-heartbreaking-loss/all
https://people.com/celebrity/marie-osmond-the-son-i-lost/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photos by (L) Brenda Chase ; (R) Carlo Allegri
