When I Go: Celebrate, Don’t Mourn”
“When I do go, I don’t want there to be morbid fucking crying people. I want people to celebrate my life. Get me in the ground as soon as you can. You can cry all you want, but I ain’t coming back. I think there’s no return after death, and that’s the truth of it. So remember the good times, play the loud songs, laugh about the madness, and raise a glass. Don’t waste time stuck in the dark — live while you’re alive. That’s what I did, and that’s what I’d want for everyone I love. Celebrate me by living loud. That’s the only way I’d want to be remembered.”
These were Ozzy’s words — scribbled on a scrap of paper found in his favorite leather jacket pocket, tucked away like a secret prayer for the world to find when he was gone. The paper was yellowed at the edges, creased from years of folding and unfolding, as if he’d read it to himself now and then, just to remind his wild heart what it wanted when the last chord faded.
When the news finally broke — that the Prince of Darkness had sung his last note — the world seemed to pause. For a moment, there was silence, like the last breath before a final scream. But then, true to his wish, the silence broke. Fans didn’t gather in church halls or whisper solemn prayers over candles. Instead, they poured into the streets, guitars slung over shoulders, battered amps dragged onto porches, car stereos cranked to the limit.
In Birmingham, the city that birthed heavy metal, they gathered beneath murals of his face — young and fierce, mouth wide open in an immortal howl. Someone lit fireworks. Someone else set up a battered old PA on the steps of a half-abandoned pub, and soon the first chords of “Crazy Train” ripped through the night. Teenagers danced in the streets while old bikers raised plastic cups full of warm beer to the stars.
Somewhere, at the edge of it all, stood a young woman named Frankie. She’d grown up on Ozzy’s music. Her dad used to play Sabbath records on a battered turntable that skipped every time someone slammed a door too hard. When she was twelve, she found her dad’s old bootleg tape of a concert in California — Ozzy’s voice echoing across decades to find her in her bedroom late at night. She’d listen to that tape when she felt small, or scared, or like the world was too much. His voice reminded her to fight, to scream back, to live.
Frankie never met Ozzy. She’d always dreamed she would — maybe backstage after a show, maybe just in passing, just long enough to say “thank you.” But when she read those words — “Celebrate me by living loud.” — it felt like he was speaking right to her.
So she pulled her old guitar from its dusty case. The strings were rusted but they held. She strummed a clumsy chord, then another. Around her, the crowd pressed closer. Someone started chanting her name, egging her on. She laughed — a sharp, bright sound that cracked through the cold night. She didn’t know all the words, but that didn’t matter. She closed her eyes and sang anyway, her voice carried by the crowd when hers cracked.
In another city — Los Angeles, where Ozzy had torn up hotel rooms and made rock and roll a four-letter word parents feared — fans packed the Sunset Strip. Tattooed drummers banged on trash cans. Bassists thumped riffs that rattled windows. Strangers who’d never spoken before locked arms and howled lyrics to the sky. It wasn’t mourning — it was a riot of gratitude.
Inside one smoky bar, Sharon Osbourne sat quietly in a booth near the back. She held a glass of wine in one hand and an old backstage pass in the other. She’d said her goodbyes in her own way, quiet and private, in the house they’d made a home despite the chaos. But tonight, she let herself slip out into the noise he loved so much. She watched young kids in Ozzy shirts too big for their bodies dance beside grizzled rockers with decades etched into their faces. Every so often, someone spotted her — they’d come over with tears and shaky smiles, asking for a hug or just to say thank you. Sharon hugged them all. She knew this was what he’d want — no black suits, no hushed voices, just life roaring at full blast.
In a small town far away, an old man named Terry, who’d once seen Sabbath play a grimy club in ’71, sat on his porch with a portable speaker blasting “Iron Man” into the dusk. His grandson sat cross-legged at his feet, nodding along, eyes wide at the riffs pouring out of the tiny box. Terry tapped ash from his cigarette and laughed, telling the same stories he always told — about the night Ozzy forgot the lyrics, about the beer-soaked encore that rattled the walls, about how they all stumbled home half-deaf but more alive than ever.
And so it went, all over the world — not a funeral, but a festival. Not a dirge, but an anthem. People danced in kitchens, belted out “Mama, I’m Coming Home” in parking lots. Old friends called each other after years of silence just to say, “Remember when?” And everywhere, those words spread — Celebrate me by living loud.
In the days that followed, the headlines were filled with tributes, but the real tribute wasn’t in the papers. It was in the roar of cheap amps, the buzz of headphones pressed too tight against ears, the kids picking up battered guitars for the first time because maybe, just maybe, they could do it too. Maybe they could live like Ozzy — flawed and fearless, fragile but fierce, forever loud.
Frankie played until her fingers blistered. She played until her voice went hoarse. She played until the sun came up over Birmingham’s old brick buildings, the sky streaked pink and gold like a promise. And when she finally stopped, she looked around at the faces of strangers turned friends, all of them beaming and exhausted and alive.
She thought about what he’d said — Get me in the ground as soon as you can. You can cry all you want, but I ain’t coming back. She knew he was right. There was no return. But there was an echo — a riot in her chest that would never die.
So she laughed, wiped sweat from her brow, and shouted to the sky, “Rest easy, Ozzy. We’ll keep it loud for you.”
And in the hush before the next song started, you could almost hear him laughing back — somewhere far beyond the dark, a voice forever scre
aming: Don’t mourn. Celebrate. Live.
