Every night at 8 PM, a little girl slips into an old leather jacket, its blackened seams and torn lining far too big for her tiny frame. The sleeves drag behind her like shadows, collecting dust, but she doesn’t mind. It once belonged to her grandfather—Ozzy Osbourne. She says it still smells like him: a mix of smoke, stage lights, and something softer. Like warmth. Like safety.
She never met the version of him that filled arenas and bit the heads off bats. To her, he was the gentle man with shaky hands who called her “little bat” and hummed lullabies in a voice weathered by time.
What the rest of the family didn’t know was that he left her something—one last voicemail. Just a cough, a chuckle, and then, in that familiar growl, he said, *“Don’t forget, love—stay weird. I’ll always be around.”*
She listens to it every morning before school. Not on a smartphone—on an old, cracked flip phone she keeps hidden in her desk drawer, its battery barely clinging to life. She presses the green button, closes her eyes, and lets his voice wrap around her like the sleeves of that jacket.
Then, every night, just before bed, she puts the jacket on again. It’s a ritual. A quiet act of remembering. Under its heavy leather weight, she curls into herself, as if his arms are still around her. The lights go out. The house is still.
And in the dark, she whispers softly, the words she’s said a hundred times but never out loud to anyone else:
“I miss you too.”
Some people leave behind fortunes or fame. Ozzy left behind something smaller, but stronger. A jacket. A voicemail. And a little girl who will never forget.
