Back To The Beginning: A Reflection from Sharon Osbourne
When Sharon Osbourne looked out at the sea of people standing under the pale glow of the arena lights, she felt the years peel away in a rush of sound and memory. From the front of the stage to the cheap seats at the back, they were all here for him—every tattooed arm lifted, every voice hoarse from singing the words that had been an anthem for generations.
This was Back To The Beginning—the name they’d given Black Sabbath’s final concert. But for Sharon, it was more than a show. It was the closing chapter of a story she’d been part of for nearly her entire life.
In one of the dressing rooms backstage, the walls still pulsing with the echo of that last thunderous chord, Sharon sat alone with a photo in her hand. Someone—one of the crew, maybe—had slipped it to her right after Ozzy walked offstage for the final time.
In the picture, Ozzy stood at the edge of the stage, his arms open wide, his head tipped back as if he were trying to catch every last scream, every last tear, every last shred of love the crowd could throw at him. He looked so small against the flood of lights and hands reaching for him—but so impossibly big too, like he’d become the very thing they all believed him to be.
The Prince of Darkness. The Madman. The Showman. Her husband.
She ran her thumb over the edge of the photo, careful not to smudge the fresh print. How many of these moments had they lived? Too many to count. The years blurred together—hotel rooms and airports, hospital beds and backstage brawls, children and rehab clinics, paparazzi and family dinners that somehow managed to feel normal between the chaos.
She wondered what people saw when they looked at them. Did they see the screaming headlines? The scandals? The reality show circus? Or did they see two kids who’d built a life on nothing but stubborn love and loud music, holding each other up when the world thought they’d both collapse?
A soft knock at the door broke her thoughts. It was Kelly, eyes rimmed red but shining with that same Osbourne spark that had carried them all through so many storms.
“Mom, they’re still out there,” she said, her voice half-whisper, half-smile. “They’re still chanting for him.”
Sharon laughed, though it caught in her throat. “He always did know how to make an exit.”
Kelly sat beside her, looking at the photo. “He looks happy.”
“He was,” Sharon said. And he was, right up to that last encore—giving everything he had left to the people who had carried him farther than he’d ever dreamed.
When they’d first met, Sharon hadn’t thought of herself as brave. She’d been the manager’s daughter—Don Arden’s girl—caught up in the hurricane of bands and bad deals. But Ozzy had looked at her like she was the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. Maybe she had been. Or maybe they’d just held each other up, two flawed people who refused to let go.
She thought back to that night decades ago when he’d come stumbling back from the edge—fresh from being fired from Sabbath, the world writing him off as a lost cause. She’d found him in a tiny, filthy flat, beer cans and despair piled to the ceiling. And she’d told him: Get up. We’re not done.
And they hadn’t been. Not by a long shot.
Now the roar of the fans drifted through the hallway, a low, pulsing hymn. Sharon felt every heartbeat of it, like the crowd itself was wrapping her in the same protection they’d always offered him. Maybe that was the strange thing about being loved by so many strangers—when the worst comes, they’re not strangers at all. They’re family, in a way only music makes possible.
Kelly’s phone buzzed. Another condolence message—one of hundreds that had poured in since the news broke. Sharon closed her eyes and let it wash over her: the messages, the photos, the blurry videos of Ozzy waving one last time, blowing kisses with hands that had once smashed hotel TVs and signed a thousand records.
He’d wanted it that way. No pity, no tragic goodbyes—just the music, the fans, the noise. One more time, Sharon, he’d told her backstage before stepping out. One last bloody time.
She hadn’t cried then. She’d saved it for now, when there was only her and the echoes and this single photo that somehow captured everything: the chaos and the calm, the boy from Aston who became a legend, the man who’d come home to her every time, no matter how far he’d wandered.
Kelly squeezed her hand. Sharon looked at her daughter—so much of Ozzy in her face, the wildness and the sweetness all tangled together—and felt something solid settle in her chest.
They’d carry him forward, all of them. Not just the family, but the fans, too. Every kid who picked up a guitar in a bedroom. Every tattoo inked with his lyrics. Every scream from the crowd when the first chords of War Pigs rattled the walls.
That was immortality, Sharon thought. The only kind that mattered.
She stood up, photo clutched tight, and stepped out into the hallway. There were people waiting—crew, friends, old roadies swapping stories and tears. There would be interviews and questions and quiet nights alone where she’d reach across the bed and remember he wasn’t there. But there would also be laughter, music blasting through the house because silence had never suited them.
Outside, the fans were still there. Some had camped by the tour buses, hoping for a glimpse of him they’d never get. Sharon stepped out into the soft drizzle of a Birmingham night and let them see her, the photo pressed to her chest.
They cheered for her too, then—softly, respectfully. And she felt their love, all of it, lifting her up when her own strength threatened to give out.
“Thank you,” she whispered to them, voice too small for the roar around her but big enough for what mattered.
Thank you for him. Thank you for loving him when he didn’t know how to love himself. Thank you for helping him say goodbye.
She didn’t need to say it aloud for them to hear. They knew. Just like she did.
And somewhere in that darkness, under the bruised clouds of the city that made them all, she could almost hear him—laughing, singing, promising her that wherever he’d gone, there was a stage waiting. And he was right there, arms wide, ready to catch every voice lifted for him.
One last time. Back to the beginning.
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