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Marie Osmond has spent the past nine months quietly dealing with the heartache of her son Michael's suicide. But the singer is finally speaking publicly about her family's tragedy for the first time during a visit to The Oprah Winfrey Show on Thursday. Watch a video preview below:
Michael Osmond was only 18 when he killed himself by jumping from the window of his apartment building. A student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, Michael seemed to be getting his life on track after a longtime battle with depression and drug abuse. His mother tells Oprah Winfrey that Michael was depressed during their final phone conversation.
"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," Marie says. "I told him... Mike, I'm gonna be there Monday and it's gonna be okay. But depression doesn't wait till Monday."
Although Marie says that Michael's death is "probably the hardest thing I've been through," she garnered controversy by returning to her Las Vegas show just weeks after her son's funeral. She tells Oprah that returning was a "really hard" but "calculated" decision.
"I'm a female in the entertainment business who has been working 48 years consistently. My stage is my safe place," Osmond, 51, explains. "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."
Marie has battled depression in the past herself; she wrote about suffering severe post-partum depression in her 2001 memoir Behind the Smile. Now she struggles not to live with regrets from her son's final days.
"I think there's always 'what if's,'" Osmond tells Oprah. "What if I had just put him on a plane and said, 'Come be with me,' or gone there? I think if you live in 'what if's,' you stop living."
Oprah Winfrey's interview with Marie Osmond airs on Thursday.
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