Fierce (22 page)

T
HE
plan was that I was going to record the album in New York so Mum, Jack, Aimee and Melinda flew with me from Los Angeles to help me settle in.

We’d agreed to do a second season of
The Osbournes
following the success of the first one, so we had the MTV crew with us when we flew to New York. We’d got so used to the camera crew being around that we didn’t even notice they were there half the time.

We all arrived at the apartment in Trump Towers, where I was going to stay during the six weeks of recording. Mum and Melinda spent the day helping me settle in and buying groceries.

That evening we all had our own plans. I was going for dinner with Nicole Richie at the Japanese restaurant Nobu. Nicole and I had become friends after our initial introduction years earlier at The Standard Hotel on Sunset in LA.

I was sitting in the restaurant when my mobile started ringing. It was Jack and he was crying, saying, ‘Kelly, you have to come back to the hotel.’

I wasn’t in the mood for it, so I said, ‘Jack, if you just had a fight with Mum, I’m not coming back.’

He answered back, ‘No! We need you to come back.’

I really thought he was being dramatic and was screaming back in the middle of the crowded restaurant, ‘Come on, Jack. Stop messing me about here.’

He just sobbed, ‘Kelly, Mum’s got cancer.’

I mean, I just fucking lost it. I practically fell to the floor in the middle of the restaurant. Nicole had to pick me up. I was crying so
much. I’ve never cried like that before. She was holding me up and guiding me to a taxi waiting outside. My mascara was all over her white dress from my streaming black face. I was a mess. I was in pieces. She put me in the taxi and I flopped my head against the window and I just sobbed uncontrollably. It was about a block away, but I couldn’t get there quick enough. I really couldn’t. It felt like the longest journey ever.

I ran into the hotel and up to the room and found mum. She was sitting on the floor in one of the rooms with her legs crossed like she always does. She looked in shock. Really, really shocked. We all did. I just held her. I couldn’t hold her tight enough. That evening she’d received a call from at her office in LA. They had been faxed the results of a medical Mum had had recently. She had been diagnosed with colon cancer.

Straightaway, we all started grabbing our stuff and we literally fled the hotel. I think we had just a small bag each. We really weren’t thinking – we just wanted to get home to my dad. We wanted Mum to start her treatment straight away.

The office had organised a private jet for us so we could get straight back to LA. On the plane we were all clinging on to each other. None of us wanted to let go of Mum. I was holding on to her for dear life. I just couldn’t comprehend what was happening. We were all shit scared.

My dad and Uncle Tony met us from the plane in like a golf buggy. Mum had called Dad from New York. When we finally walked into the house he just broke down.

Mum went straight into hospital for treatment. We all dealt with the news so differently. Jack went completely off the rails. He hardly ever visited Mum in hospital – he’s terrified of them. He just went out and got high. My dad lost it big time. He just drank and drank and drank and drank. I totally understand why he did. He thought the love of his life was going to die.

Aimee turned into a mother figure and was bossing us all around. She was doing what she thought was best, but sometimes she came across as too harsh.

I just didn’t want to let my mum out of my sight, so I moved into the hospital. She went into Cedars-Sinai for treatment. I put my plans to record the album on hold for a short while and stayed with her. I slept on the floor on a roll-up bed.

I was trying to be strong for my mum, so I was taking Vicodin to hide the pain. I didn’t want to leave her side for one minute. I also wanted to numb the terrible sadness I was feeling.

My friends would try and persuade me to go out with them but every time I did, I’d be sitting in The Roxy or The Standard Hotel wondering how my mum was and whether she would be OK. Or there would be other times when I would get completely wasted so I didn’t have to think about it. And then I would go home and not back to the hospital because I didn’t want my mum to see me in that state.

I’m not going to lie, it was a really terrible time. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but in my head I often thought I’d kill myself if my mum didn’t make it. I thought, if Mum dies, that will be it. I wouldn’t be able to cope without Mum. She was, and is, the centre of our universe.

I knew that Dad would kill himself if anything happened to Mum because he wouldn’t be able to take it. I couldn’t take it. But I had to be strong for Mum and not think of such stupid things like I would kill myself. Mum needed me.

I swear to God, Mum just carried on working while she was in hospital getting her treatment – she never stopped. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was sick. I think that’s probably what got her through – it stopped her focussing on just how ill she was. My mum’s a fighter.

She insisted that the MTV crew continued filming the second series of the show because she wanted everything to be as normal as possible. She was putting on a brave face for us. I knew she was.

My mum is the person we all go to when we have a problem – my dad, me, my brother and sister – everyone. She’s always so strong. But who does my mum go to when she needs to talk to someone? That worried me so much. Of course she has friends – Lynn, who runs the UK
office, is her best friend and she could always talk to her. But Mum usually tries to stay strong for everyone.

There was a time when my mum started to lose her hair because of the chemotherapy she was having. That was really tough. My mum’s hair is her signature feature. It’s thick and lovely. That was when she thought she was going to die.

She wrote a wish list of all the things she wanted to do before she died and she put her make-up artist Jude in charge of the plans. One of them was that she wanted her and my dad to renew their wedding vows. The ceremony took place on New Year’s Eve, 2002 —
five months after she was first diagnosed with cancer – at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

I can’t even bear to look at that video now. I just can’t look at it. It makes me so sad. It was around this time we got Cher’s wig-maker to make my mum’s wigs. To cheer Mum up we used to put them on the dogs at home and take pictures. When she was asleep we’d frame them and leave them on the bedside table to make her laugh when she woke up.

Do you know just how cruel some people were when they heard my mum had cancer? One woman actually faxed my mum’s office in LA and accused her of pulling a publicity stunt. How fucked up is that? Someone else emailed and said, ‘Sharon, you’ve pulled some publicity stunts in your time, but this …’ I couldn’t believe it.

Our nanny Melinda was so fantastic around this time. She was instrumental in keeping our family together and for that I’ll always be really grateful. She looked out for all of us.

M
UM
was adamant that I continue with the album and so I started to go back into the recording studio. At first it felt like an adventure. I got to play around in the recording studio. But all of that changed very quickly. The novelty wore off. On top of worrying about my mum, I felt like a lot was being asked of me and I was too young to deal with it. I really cracked under all the responsibility and pressure. I felt like I was tied to the music and I just wasn’t passionate
enough about it to not care about the other things that were happening in my life at that time.

I was so miserable. I was recording an album – it should have been one of the most fun things to do, but my mind wasn’t there. It was my mum’s idea to call my first album
Shut Up
. The second single was called that, too. I didn’t like the name and I didn’t want to call it that. Hearing that song in my head now makes me shudder and go, ‘Urgh!’